Consolidation in the credit info sector
Jinfo Blog

10th August 2009

By Penny Crossland

Item

Swedish business information provider Bisnode (http://www.bisnode.com), majority-owned by private equity firm Ratos, has been quietly divesting itself of what it describes as ‘non-core’ companies in recent months. The sale of Nomi, a pharmaceutical research firm (http://digbig.com/5badsm) and Inter Dialog, a marketing consultancy (http://digbig.com/5badsq) ties in with the company’s strategy statement; however last week’s announcement that the UK and Ireland operations of ICC were to be sold to D&B UK, on the face of it, does not seem to make sense. In the accompanying press release (http://digbig.com/5badsr) Bisnode states that the ICC divestment is in line with its strategy ‘to focus on businesses that can achieve significant synergies within the group’. One would have thought that ICC remains a perfect fit. With revenues of around £13 million and 200 employees in the UK and Ireland, ICC has been a leading provider of financial, risk and credit reports for 40 years and will enhance D&B UK’s product offering. There will however be considerable overlap between the two products. The press release on ICC’s sale does not mention whether list broker Prospect Swetenhams, credit checking firm Checkit (http://www.checkit.co.uk) and credit analyst Creditscorer (http://www.creditscorer.com) all integrated into ICC’s operations, form part of the D&B deal. In January this year , Bisnode sold UK market research publisher Key Note Ltd to an ‘undisclosed acquiror’ (http://digbig.com/5badsn). Given that Bisnode’s company portfolio seems to be concentrated on Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe (http://digbig.com/5badss) – it owns several D&B and Hoppenstedt operations in those countries – it could be concluded that the company wishes to withdraw from the UK market, in order to focus its effort on mainland Europe.

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