Software-focused private equity investor Hg has agreed to buy stake in smartTrade Technologies, a French provider of multi-asset electronic trading solutions.
The sellers are Keensight Capital and Pléiade Venture. Hg will leverage the Mercury 2 Fund to back smartTrade.
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With the investment of Hg, smartTrade aims to ramp up innovation and R&D initiatives.
smartTrade CEO and co-founder David Vincent and its management team will retain their interest in the firm.
Vincent noted: “Welcoming Hg, a real expert in software and technology in this sector, creates a truly compelling offering. I am personally very excited about the prospects of the business.
“Keensight Capital and Pléiade Venture have played a decisive role in our growth to date, and we are grateful of their involvement. Now, with Hg’s support, alongside the smartTrade team, I am committed to further developing a great service for our customers, as they look to modernise their own systems.”
smartTrade offers liquidity management tools to support operations of high-performance trading platforms for financial services providers. The firm also has a presence in London, Geneva, Milan, New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.
Hg believes smartTrade to be a “compelling fit” owing to its “continued potential for growth”.
The deal, whose value was not divulged, marks the seventh time Hg has backed technology businesses catering to wealth and asset management as well as the capital markets industries.
The firm’s earlier investments in that space include the backing of multi-asset trading technology software firm Ullink and fund data provider FE fundinfo, among others.
