News
RELX Group announces definitive agreement to acquire ThreatMetrix
January 2018 by Marc Jacob
RELX Group announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the entire issued share capital of ThreatMetrix, for a consideration of $830m payable in cash.
ThreatMetrix is a specialize in the global risk-based authentication sector, headquartered in San Jose, California and founded in 2005. ThreatMetrix technology analyzes connections among devices, locations, anonymized identity information and threat intelligence, and combines this data with behavioral analytics to identify high-risk digital behavior and transactions in real time.
ThreatMetrix has strong client relationships across financial services, e-commerce, and media sectors and offers authentication solutions for account origination, payments, “card not present” transactions and account logins.
ThreatMetrix’s Digital Identity Network analyzes over 100 million transactions per day across 35,000 websites from 5,000 customers. This makes it the one of the largest repositories of online digital identities in the world, encompassing 1.4 billion unique online identities from 4.5 billion devices in 185 countries.
ThreatMetrix will become part of Risk & Business Analytics, which under the LexisNexis Risk Solutions brand addresses fraud and authentication challenges by applying advanced analytics to physical identity attributes, including identity credentials, addresses and asset ownership.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions already has an established commercial partnership with ThreatMetrix, including ThreatMetrix’s device intelligence solutions in its Risk Defense Platform. Further integration of ThreatMetrix’s capabilities in device, email and social intelligence will build a more complete picture of risk in today’s global, mobile digital economy, providing both physical and digital identity solutions.
The transaction is subject to customary conditions and regulatory consents and is expected to close during the first half of 2018. It is not expected to have a material impact on 2018 RELX Group earnings.
In 2017, RELX Group completed eight acquisitions for a total consideration of £123m, and disposed of 17 assets for a total of £87m. This compares to an average acquisition spend in the previous five years of approximately £300m per annum.
