Well, the “this week in backgrounds” title continues to be misleading. It should be “recently” but hey, my blog, my rules!
The acquisitions market is very hot right now– lots happening and more coming soon. Not only do we have CRA’s buying other CRA’s but private equity and other strategic buyers continue to make their bets on the 2.9 billion dollar screening market.
First, Appriss announced last week the acquisition of Crime Finders, Inc. (CFi), a regional county level research provider to the screening industry. Established in 1999, CFi offers county-level felony and misdemeanor criminal records research for all counties in California, Nevada, Hawaii and Illinois. CFi’s researchers investigate individual cases using online tools or the county courthouse of a requested jurisdiction.
“Appriss is transforming the background screening industry by enabling a best-of-breed post hire suite of products,” said Brian Matthews, Appriss Sr. Vice President of Data Products. “The addition of CFi and HDI data assets enables us to deliver a complete solution for the screening industry, moving beyond a simple alert product to a comprehensive continuous employee monitoring solution, which includes criminal record verification, court case updates and adjudication services.”
Also today, Cisive (Formerly Carco) announced the acquisition of healthcare screening specialist, PreCheck, Inc. out of Houston, TX. This is a very smart play for Cisive. PreCheck is a highly respected and well run firm and will certainly help Cisive continue to gain significant market share in highly regulated screening markets. This was a very hot and highly competitive acquisition. PreCheck ran a pretty thorough process and there were a lot of suiters. If I had to speculate, they paid a very high multiple which means they have to execute this merger flawlessly in order for it to work out well financially in the long term. Both firms have excellent teams in place. I’m excited to see what else they have in store!
Lastly, there is a lot of movement in the lower mid-market. In the coming weeks and months there will be at least 3 but more likely 5 more acquisitions announced. Private equity continues to be active as well as some more strategic buyers. I’m guessing you will also see more out of HireRight (General Atlantic) and Sterling as well, but I’m not hearing a ton about that right now.
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Best,
Jason
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