The owner of LexisNexis has added a digital identity verification company to its risk portfolio. RELX Group, formerly known as Reed Elsevier, is acquiring ThreatMetrix for £580m which will become part of the LexisNexis Risk & Business Analytics division. The company applies advanced analytics to physical identity attributes, including identity credentials, addresses and asset ownership and has built a contributory database of information of electronic devices and associated digital personas to enable customers to quickly and passively identify returning customers. Its database contains 1.4bn unique online digital identities from 4.5bn devices in 185 countries. Customers are typically financial institutions, e-commerce companies and media businesses. ThreatMetrix’s Digital Identity Network analyses over 100m transactions a day or 24bn transactions a year across 35,000 websites from 5,000 customers.
Established partnership
LexisNexis Risk Solutions already has an established commercial partnership with ThreatMetrix, including ThreatMetrix’s device intelligence solutions in its Risk Defense Platform. Further integration of ThreatMetrix’s capabilities in device, email and social intelligence will build a more complete picture of risk in today’s global, mobile digital economy, providing both physical and digital identity solutions.
Targeted data sets and analytics
Risk & Business Analytics CEO, Mark Kelsey, said: 'ThreatMetrix is widely recognised as a leader in the digital identity space. Bringing that together with our own strengths in physical identity attributes will give our clients across all forms of commerce and geographies a more reliable, comprehensive approach to fraud and identity risk management while maintaining the privacy and security principles our customers have come to expect. The acquisition is in line with our organic growth driven strategy, supported by acquisitions of targeted data sets and analytics that are natural additions to our existing business.'
Synergies
Reed Taussig, president and CEO of ThreatMetrix, said: 'Our partnership with LexisNexis Risk Solutions over the past two years has fully demonstrated the strong synergies between our two organisations. The benefits our shared customers have realised from the integration of our respective products are unmatched in the industry. Over the past ten years the ThreatMetrix team has pioneered the digital identity space, and by combining the strength of LexisNexis Risk Solutions and ThreatMetrix into a single business, our customers, partners, and employees will benefit with a unique and compelling market.'
Legal acquisitions
RELX Group is a company with a £31bn market capitalisation and annual revenues of £6.9 billion. LexisNexis Risk Solutions, its Risk and Business Analytics division, and LexisNexis, its legal business, are headquartered in the US. About half RELX Group’s £6.9bn annual revenues are generated in north America.This is the fourth acquisition by RELX Group in the San Francisco Bay Area during the past two years. It was represented by Cravath Swaine & Moore on this deal. The other three acquisitions were:
• Lex Machina, the legal analytics group, based in Menlo Park. It was acquired by LexisNexis, RELX’s legal business in November 2015. The company uses machine learning and natural language processing to help lawyers win cases and additional business. The business was spun out of Stamford University.
• Ravel Law, a legal research analytics and visualisation company based in San Francisco, was also acquired by LexisNexis, RELX Group’s legal business in June 2017. Ravel Law combines content from Harvard Law Library artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing technologies to help litigators uncover new insights.
• Bepress, a Berkeley-based company founded by three University of California, Berkeley professors, was acquired by Elsevier, RELX Group’s science, technical and medical business, in August 2017. Bepress provides universities with the ability to collect, organise, preserve and disseminate their intellectual output.
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