Specialty MGA Nexus Group has acquired trade credit MGA Equinox Global, the firm revealed in a statement this morning.
Equinox, which was established in 2009 and has offices in London, New York, Paris, Hamburg and Amsterdam, will continue to be provided with underwriting capacity by
Beazley – previously its largest shareholder – through a 10-year underwriting support agreement.
Nexus, which has acquired all of the Equinox group companies, revealed that the founding shareholders and management team, consisting of Steen Parsholt, Mike Holley, Rob Crampton and Vicki Harrison, will stay in place as part of the move. Steen will remain as chairman, and Mike as chief executive officer of Equinox, with the founders of the company and Beazley becoming shareholders in Nexus, aligning all parties to grow and develop the business, the acquiring group said in a release.
“I have been really impressed at Nexus’s commitment to the trade credit class, and this acquisition will enable Equinox to accelerate its growth and product offering in all countries where we are present,” CEO Holley said, adding that the company was delighted to be joining the group. “There is a significant opportunity to take advantage of Nexus CIFS’ product offerings, feeding these through and leveraging the significant investments Equinox has made in its international office network and infrastructure.”
Equinox specialises in writing trade credit insurance for larger corporates and multinational companies, with Holley – who has worked in trade credit since 1983 – at the helm.
“The product offering includes non-cancellable credit limits; syndication with other credit insurers, and a top-quality credit limit service delivered by its state of the art online portal Equinox Approach,” he said.
Colin Thompson, founder and executive chairman of Nexus, said that Beazley’s offer of a 10-year capacity commitment “speaks volumes about the quality of both Equinox’s underwriting and management.”
“We are excited about working together with Mike and his team to build a global market leading trade credit offering which, when combined with our current trade credit MGA Nexus CIFS, will be a £60m GWP business underwriting profitable global specialist trade credit insurance,” he said.
Thompson described Equinox and Nexus CIFS’ books of business as “complementary, with very little overlap, both in terms of line sizes and geographical focus,” and said that the result would be significant opportunities to expand globally by harnessing the joint distribution channels following the transaction.
“Following on from the announcement of Nexus’s purchase of Vectura Underwriting last week, this is another example of the successful execution of Nexus’s “buy and build” strategy which will add significant EBITDA and value to the Nexus group,” he said.
Nexus and Equinox have exchanged with completion scheduled to follow during 2017. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
