An analytics business created in 2013 by two former Standard Life private equity managers will continue to grow in Edinburgh after its takeover by US giant eVestment, one of its founders has said.
Graham Paterson said the five-man TopQ, which launched its private equity analytic software only 21months ago, was a "tremendous potential growth story" after the sale for an undisclosed sum to its 300-strong parent.
Georgia-based eVestment was founded in 2000 and was just outside the top 300 fastest-growing US technology and media companies last year. It has nearly1,000 institutional investors as clients.
Mr Paterson was a co-founder of SL Capital Partners when the Edinburgh firm spun out its private equity arm in 2007, giving nine Edinburgh-based executives a 40per cent stake in the US-based business. He left in 2010 to join online identity verifier MiiCard, becoming chief financial officer in 2012, then teamed up with another former colleague Graeme Faulds who left SL Capital Partners in 2013, to form TopQ with Boston-based Drake Paulson.
Mr Paterson said: "We have been in the market for just over 18 months during which time we have seen a good pick-up with applications and have grown our customer base. The plan was always to be a very significant service provider to the private equity industry...we made a great start with that and when the opportunity came along to partner with eVestment via an acquisition it made a huge amount of sense."
He said eVestment had transformed fund industry analytics and the opportunity was now to "transform private equity".
Mr Paterson said there were "no timescales" on the commitment of the TopQ executives to the business. "It is very much business as usual for us, other than we now have more than 300 people. With the eVestment resources, I see us being able to build a large private equity-focused business, and the plan is much to continue to have a base for that in Edinburgh."
Jim Minnick, chief executive and co-founder of eVestment, said: "Institutional investors have invested more than $3 trillion with private equity firms globally, and that amount is only going to increase as those investors continue to seek diversity in their investment portfolios."
SL Capital Partners has grown from $200 million to around $6.5billion and is still 60 per cent owned by Standard Life.
eVestment said it was launching "a new and expansive private equity dataset" in the second half of 2015 and would begin development immediately to integrate it with TopQ .
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