Full Year 2014 Finance Industry Trends

2014 Key Highlights

• Four of the industry’s five largest deals in 2014 occurred in the Payments segment. These four transactions, with a combined value of $8.97 billion, accounted for 31 percent of aggregate value during the year.
• There were 74 financially sponsored transactions with an aggregate value of $12.04 billion, representing 20 percent of the total volume and 42 percent of the total value, respectively.

2014 Key Trends

• Total transaction volume in 2014 increased by eight percent over 2013, from 343 to 371.
• Total transaction value in 2014 rose by five percent over 2013, from $27.37 billion to $28.70 billion.
• The median revenue multiple improved from 2.3x in 2013 to 3.0x in 2014. The median EBITDA multiple increased from 11.9x in 2013 to 13.3x in 2014.
• The segment with the largest rise in volume in 2014 over 2013 was Payments with a 44 percent increase, from 95 to 137 transactions. Payments deals totaled more than one-third of the industry’s aggregate volume in 2014.

M&A Market Overview

Berkery Noyes tracked 1,024 Financial Technology and Information transactions between 2012 and 2014, of which 295 disclosed financial terms, and calculated the aggregate value to be $71.77 billion. Based on known transaction values, we project values of 729 undisclosed transactions to be $14.52 billion, totaling $86.29 billion worth of transactions tracked over the past three years.

Disclosed median enterprise value multiples for all segments combined in this report during the last 36 months were 2.9x revenue and 11.9x EBITDA.

The most active acquirer over the past 36 months, either directly or through an affiliated business, was Thomson Reuters with 21 transactions. 11 of these 21 deals occurred in the Capital Markets segment.