Clearwater Analytics snaps up Beacon and Blackstone’s Bistro for combined $685m
US-based investment management platform Clearwater Analytics has signed definitive agreements to acquire Beacon, a developer platform for capital markets, and Blackstone’s portfolio visualisation software, Bistro, in two deals worth a combined $685 million.
Clearwater Analytics acquires Beacon and Bistro for $685m
Founded in 2014, Beacon offers financial institutions tools for portfolio management, cloud migration, risk management, application development, and sales and trading. Clearwater will acquire Beacon for $560 million, with 60% paid in cash and the rest in shares of Clearwater Class A common stock, valued at around $30.05 per share.
Bistro, originally developed for Blackstone’s Credit and Insurance arm, provides a “comprehensive view of private credit portfolios”, Clearwater says, including client reporting, risk management insights, and asset analytics. Clearwater will purchase Bistro for $125 million, with $10 million paid in cash and the remainder in shares, valued at $30 per share.
To fund the purchases, along with the previously announced $1.5 billion acquisition of fellow investment management platform Enfusion, Clearwater says it will utilise a “portion” of its $200 million revolving line of credit, cash on hand, and its $800 million Term Loan B.
Sandeep Sahai, CEO of Clearwater, states that the integration of these acquisitions, expected to occur “over the next year or two”, will provide chief investment and chief risk officers with a “unified, real-time view of their entire portfolio—from public equities and private credit to structured products and alternatives—all in a single, cloud-native platform”.
Clearwater’s platform, which it claims processes over $8.8 trillion daily, will combine with “Beacon’s cross-asset risk modelling, Bistro’s alternative asset intelligence, and Enfusion’s front-office capabilities” to offer what the company describes as a “single source of truth for investment execution”.
The integrated platform aims to streamline accounting, compliance, regulatory reporting, risk management, and “analytics across all asset classes”, the company says.
“For the first time, institutional investors can better see, analyse, and act across public and private markets in near real-time—without the operational bottlenecks of legacy systems,” adds Clearwater.
