Dun & Bradstreet Acquisition & Valuation

Along with Experian and TransUnion, Equifax is one of the leading credit bureaus in the United States. Equifax’s credit reports provide credit histories on millions of consumers, and the firm's services are critical to lenders’ credit decisions. In addition, about 40% of the firm’s revenue comes from Workforce Solutions, which provides income verification and employer human resources services. Equifax generates about 25% of its revenue from outside the United States.

Experian is one of the leading credit bureaus in North America and the United Kingdom, providing the consumer information that is the basis for making lending decisions. The company also provides decision analytics, marketing data, and direct-to-consumer credit products and services. Roughly one quarter of the company's revenue is generated outside of North America and the United Kingdom, primarily in Latin America and Asia.

GlobalData PLC is a UK-based data analyzing and publishing company. The firm conducts industry analysis and research reports and also provides forecasts to help its clients make informed decisions. The company has spread across the Asia Pacific, EMEA, Latin and North America serving clients from the consumer, information communications technology, and healthcare markets. The Group operates within two segment, Data Analytics: Healthcare, and insights: Non-Healthcare. Company operates in Uk, Europe, USA, Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, and Others. Majority of revenue is from USA.

AlphaSense is an artificial intelligence platform for market intelligence and research, founded in 2011 by Jack Kokko and Raj Neervannan and headquartered in New York City. The concept grew out of Kokko's experience as a Morgan Stanley analyst manually searching through large volumes of financial documents, and the company built a search engine that applies natural language processing and machine learning to surface insights across a vast content universe spanning company filings, earnings call and expert call transcripts, broker and equity research, news, trade journals, and private company data, indexed across many languages. Its tools include generative search, document summarisation, sentiment analysis, real-time monitoring and alerts, and AI-driven deep research that returns sourced, citable answers. The platform serves asset managers, investment banks, consultancies, corporations, life sciences firms, and private equity, counting thousands of enterprise customers including a large share of the S&P 100 and major global banks. It expanded its capabilities through acquisitions of Sentieo and expert-research provider Tegus, and has raised well over a billion dollars across multiple financing rounds from investors such as Viking Global Investors, Goldman Sachs, BDT & MSD Partners, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Alphabet's CapitalG, and BOND, reaching a valuation in the region of four billion dollars.

Plaid is a San Francisco-based financial technology company that operates a data network connecting consumers' bank accounts to financial applications. Its products include Link for account connections to more than 12,000 institutions, Auth, Identity and Balance for account verification, Transfer and Signal for ACH and real-time payments and payment risk, Identity Verification, Monitor and Beacon for KYC, AML and fraud prevention, and Plaid Check products such as LendScore for credit underwriting. Customers range from fintech applications such as Venmo, Robinhood and Coinbase to banks, lenders, payroll providers and AI companies, and Plaid says more than one in two Americans have used its network. The company reported revenue growth above 25% in 2024 and a return to positive operating margins. Visa agreed to buy Plaid for $5.3 billion in January 2020, but the deal was abandoned after a Department of Justice antitrust challenge. Plaid was valued at $13.4 billion in its 2021 Series D, $6.1 billion in an April 2025 common-stock sale led by Franklin Templeton, and $8 billion in a February 2026 employee share sale. It was founded by Zach Perret and William Hockey.

Carta is a San Francisco-based software company that provides equity management and fund administration tools for private companies and their investors. Its core product maintains capitalization tables, digitising stock certificates, options, warrants and other securities so that companies, employees, investors and their law firms can track ownership, and it also offers 409A valuations and fund administration services for venture capital firms. It operated CartaX, a private stock exchange launched in 2021, until shutting it in 2024. In August 2022 Carta reported tracking more than USD 2.5 trillion of company equity and having facilitated USD 13 billion of secondary sales; it had 1,618 employees in 2022, and customers have included Slack, Calendly and Affirm. The company earns subscription and service fees from companies and investment firms. Carta has raised about USD 1.2 billion of venture capital, most recently a USD 500 million Series G led by Silver Lake in 2021 at a USD 7.4 billion valuation, and in May 2026 it acquired Avantia and launched Carta Law. It was founded as eShares in 2012 by Henry Ward and Manu Kumar.

Morningstar Inc is a provider of independent investment insights to financial advisers, asset managers, and investors. It provides data and research insights on various investment offerings, including managed investment products, publicly listed companies, private capital markets, debt securities, and real-time market data. The company has five reportable segments: Morningstar Direct Platform, PitchBook, Morningstar Credit, Morningstar Wealth, and Morningstar Retirement. Maximum revenue is derived from the Morningstar Direct Platform, which provides investors with comprehensive data, research, insights, and investment analysis through product areas such as Morningstar Data, Morningstar Direct, and Morningstar Advisor Workstation. Geographically, it generates maximum revenue from the USA.

CREED is a commercial real estate capital markets technology company that provides a digital platform connecting investors, sponsors, brokers and lenders. The platform holds data on lenders and loan requests, lets sponsors and brokers request financing and compare offers, and includes a marketplace through which limited partners can be matched with sponsors. CREED sells access to the platform to commercial real estate professionals on a subscription basis. The company is led by chief executive Alex Leybov, a long-time commercial real estate investment banker, and is headquartered in New York with a second office in Miami. It launched a mobile app for lenders in 2021, a desktop portal in 2023 and its limited partner marketplace in 2024. Its stated mission is to bring liquidity and efficiency to commercial real estate financing through data and digitisation.

Beijing Compass Technology Development Co Ltd is the provider of professional financial data analysis and securities investment advisory services. The company is a securities analysis software developer and securities information service provider in China.

FactSet provides financial data and portfolio analytics to the global investment community. The company aggregates data from third-party data suppliers, news sources, exchanges, brokerages, and contributors into its workstations. In addition, it provides essential portfolio analytics that companies use to monitor portfolios and address reporting requirements. Buy-side clients (including wealth and corporate clients) account for over 80% of FactSet's annual subscription value. In 2015, the company acquired Portware, a provider of trade execution software. In 2017, it acquired BISAM, a risk management and performance measurement provider. In 2022, it completed its purchase of CUSIP Global Services.

Marex Group PLC offers a diversified financial services platform providing essential liquidity, market access, and infrastructure services to clients across energy, commodities, and financial markets. It provides critical services to the clients by connecting them to exchanges and providing various execution and hedging services across its assets and products. The group operates in a large and fragmented market with infrastructure requirements and regulatory and technological complexity. It has five segments Clearing, Agency and Execution, Market Making, Hedging and Investment Solutions, and The Corporate. The group generates revenue from Agency and Execution that matches buyers and sellers by facilitating price discovery across the energy and financial securities markets.

Pipe is a financial services platform that enables subscription-based businesses to access capital by trading future recurring revenue streams with institutional investors through real-time auctions. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company processes transactions for SaaS firms, media publishers, and e-commerce operators seeking non-dilutive funding based on annual contract values. Launched in 2020, Pipe integrates with billing systems like Stripe and Zuora to automate revenue verification and payouts, serving over 5,000 companies globally with a marketplace exceeding $3 billion in tradable revenue by 2023.

Branch is a mobile marketing platform specializing in deep linking, attribution, and user journey analytics. San Francisco-headquartered and founded in 2014, the company tracks cross-platform campaigns for apps on iOS and Android. World-class clients including Instacart, Western Union, NBCUniversal, Zocdoc, and Sephora use Branch to measure ROI on ad spend across Google Ads, Facebook, and Snapchat. The platform processes billions of links monthly, ensuring privacy compliance with App Tracking Transparency.

TransUnion, along with Equifax and Experian, is one of the three leading credit bureaus in the United States, providing the consumer information that is the basis for granting credit. The company also provides fraud detection, marketing, and analytical services. TransUnion operates in over 30 countries. About 20%-25% of its revenue comes from international markets.

Kpler is a London-headquartered data and analytics platform launched in 2014, tracking commodities transportation including LNG, crude oil, dry bulk, freight, and inventories across 40 markets. With over 500 employees globally, it expanded through acquisitions of ClipperData in 2021, JBC Energy and Core-e in 2022, and MarineTraffic with FleetMon in 2023, serving traders, producers, and governments.

Qontigo is a financial data and analytics provider under Deutsche Börse Group, specializing in multi-asset risk management, index licensing, and portfolio construction tools. Its platforms cover equity, fixed income, commodities, and ESG factors, serving asset managers, banks, and pension funds globally. Eschborn-headquartered with offices in New York, London, and Zug, Qontigo licenses indices like STOXX Europe 600 and provides Axioma risk models. Formed in 2019 from the merger of Axioma, DAX, and STOXX, it equips clients with cloud-based analytics for investment decisions.

CRISIL Ltd provides research and analytics solutions for clients of all sizes. It operates through segments of Ratings services, and Research, Analytics & Solutions. The Ratings services segment includes credit ratings for corporates, banks, bank loans, credit analysis services, grading services and global analytical services. The Research, Analytics and solutions segment which generates key revenue, includes global research and risk solutions, industry reports, customized research assignments, subscription to data services, independent equity research (IER), IPO gradings, training, credit ratings for small and medium enterprises, advisory services and a comprehensive range of risk management tools, analytics and solutions to financial institutions, banks and corporates in India.

Shenzhen Fortune Trend Technology Co Ltd is engaged in research and development of securities analysis systems and computer communication systems. It provides securities investment analysis system for securities institutions and investors under the brand Tongdaxin. Tongdaxin's well-known online trading products are: China Merchants Securities Zhiyuan One Account, Guoxin Securities Golden Sun Edition, CITIC Securities Zhixin All-rounder, GF Securities Financial Terminal, Galaxy Securities Neptune, Guotai Junan Securities Fuyi, among others.