Anglo-Dutch media giant Reed Elsevier today revealed plans to spend an estimated £120 million on buying a French software company that specialises in spotting money laundering and dodgy financial transactions.
FircoSoft, which is backed by the Rothschild family, already counts eight of the world’s 10 biggest financial institutions as clients.
The acquisition will be Reed Elsevier’s largest since its £343 million purchase of another financial software business, Accuity, in 2011 and continues its strategy of expanding in digital and reducing reliance on print.
Traders welcomed the deal, sending the shares up 9.5p to 1002p to smash the £10 mark for the first time.
Reed Elsevier plans to combine FircoSoft and Accuity in response to demand from clients under pressure to obey Know Your Customer rules about money laundering and screening of transactions.
Regulators have been imposing increasingly large fines on banks, with France’s BNP Paribas being hit with a record $8.97 billion (£5.42 billion) penalty in America for dealing with black-listed countries.
Private-equity firm Keensight Capital and Paris Orléans, owner of the Rothschild group, own FircoSoft, which was founded in 1990.
Sources close to the deal said FircoSoft was valued at about €150 million (£119 million).
