The Finovate Group, the fintech event and information venture, has been sold to Informa Plc.
The sale closed in April, but has not been publicly disclosed. Terms of the deal are not known.
Jim Bruene, owner of The Finovate Group, confirmed to Bank Innovation that the company has been sold.
Redwood Capital Group, a boutique investment bank based in New York, represented Finovate in the transaction. Redwood has advised several events companies in M&A in recent transactions.
The Finovate Group presents the Finovate series of events, which are comprised of financial technology demos. Finovate offers four events today, three under the “Finovate” brand and one called FinDEVr, which is geared toward software developers. Finovate launched its events business in 2007. Before that, Bruene solely published the Online Banking Report, a newsletter he founded in 1995. The newsletter was sold in 2014.
Another major fintech events company, Money2020, was sold in 2014 to i2i Events Group.
Informa, a publicly traded information company based in London, traces its roots back to 1734. The company employs about 6,500 and generated around $1.8 billion of revenue last year. About 32% of its revenue comes from events, Finovate’s main business. Finance is one of several industries Informa serves. The company has a current market capitalization of approximately $6.4 billion.