Octus acquired by London Stock Exchange Group

London Stock Exchange Group agreed in October 2026 to acquire the entire share capital of Octus from funds advised by Permira and from the company’s management, including founder Kent Collier, for cash, at an enterprise value of $3.5bn. Completion was expected in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals, and LSEG financed the purchase with external debt. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York, Octus supplies credit intelligence to institutions that lend to or invest in companies outside public bond markets. Its analysts read the documentation behind private, illiquid and distressed credit, the covenants, deal terms and restructuring filings that are not published in any standard form, and convert it into structured data its clients can search and compare. Around that it provides the workflow tools through which they monitor their positions. Its customers are buy-side institutions, investment banks, law firms and advisory firms, more than 750 of them with over 40,000 individual users, served by a workforce of more than 900 people. It expected revenue of $250–500M in 2026. Octus was to join LSEG’s Data & Analytics division, with Collier continuing to run the business. The two product ranges meet at different ends of the credit market: LSEG covers listed fixed income, where prices and terms are public, while Octus covers the private and distressed segments, where the information must be assembled document by document. Octus also brought relationships with hedge funds and alternative investment managers, a client base LSEG had reached less than others. For Permira, the sale realised its entire holding after roughly four years, during which Octus more than tripled its annual recurring revenue, rebuilt its platform around artificial intelligence and absorbed three acquisitions, FinDox, Sky Road and LevPro. It was the firm’s sixth strategic exit of 2026. Morgan Stanley and Barclays advised LSEG. Evercore and Goldman Sachs advised Octus’s shareholders, with Weil, Gotshal & Manges and McDermott Will & Schulte acting for Permira and Octus, and Kleinberg, Kaplan, Wolff & Cohen and Moulton Moore Stella for the chief executive and management.