Houlihan Lokey Advises Synova

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Mintec, a portfolio company of Synova, has sold a majority stake to Five Arrows Principal Investments (Five Arrows). As part of the transaction, Synova has reinvested in Mintec for a significant minority stake from its latest Fund IV. The transaction signed and closed on 31 January 2022. Terms have not been disclosed.

Mintec is the leading global provider of food-related commodity prices, forecasts, and advanced analytics to the $9 trillion food industry—all delivered through its cutting-edge SaaS platform, Mintec Analytics. Mintec provides over 750 of the world’s largest companies with critical data that underpins their procurement, budgeting, and risk management covering more than 15,000 food ingredients and associated materials.

Synova is a leading growth investor focused on high-growth companies in the middle market. Synova has generated industry-leading returns in the UK, which is reflected in the company being awarded “UK Private Equity House of the Year” four times in the past seven years. Synova has recently been listed as one of the “Most Consistent Top Performing Buyout Fund Managers” globally by Preqin. Synova is currently the only UK firm—and one of only two in Europe—with a No. 1 Preqin ranking, with all of its applicable funds ranked in the top quartile, placing Synova as one of the top nine best performers globally.

Five Arrows Principal Investments is part of the European private equity arm of Rothschild & Co’s Merchant Banking business. Five Arrows is focused on investing in middle-market companies with highly defensible market positions; strong management teams; business models with high visibility of organic unit volume growth and strong free cash flow conversion; and multiple operational levers that can be used to unlock latent value. Sectors are limited to data and software, technology-enabled business services, and healthcare.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to Synova and Mintec and assisted in initiating, structuring, and negotiating the transaction on their behalf. This transaction further enhances the Data & Analytics team’s extensive track record in the natural resources and commodities data, analytics, and software sector with more than 40 transactions completed over the past 14 years. Recently closed transactions in the sector include the sales of Kynetec to Paine Schwartz Partners; StormGeo to Alfa Laval; Aurora Energy Research to CGE Partners; Tecnon OrbiChem to Forest2Market/Fisher International Inc.; RigData from S&P Global Platts to Drillinginfo; and PowerAdvocate to Verisk Analytics.