IPO FILING: RiskMetrics Group, Inc.

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 19, 5:01PM EDT

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RiskMetrics Group, Inc. has filed today to come public via an Initial public offering. It lists that it will sell up to $200 million in common stock under an undisclosed ticker and the exchange has not been stated. Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, and Banc of America have been fingered as the underwriters.

RiskMetrics is a provider of risk management and corporate governance products and services to participants in the global financial markets to help clients better understand and manage the risks associated with their financial holdings, provide greater transparency to their internal and external constituencies, satisfy regulatory and reporting requirements and make more informed investment decisions. It sells solutions across multiple asset classes to asset managers, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, financial advisors and corporations. As of June 30, 2007, it had approximately 3,300 clients located in 50 countries: 74 of the 100 largest investment managers, 31 of the 50 largest mutual fund companies, 34 of the 50 largest hedge funds, each of the 10 largest global investment banks and 17 of the 30 OECD central banks.

RiskMetrics consists of two industry leading businesses: RiskMetrics and ISS.

RiskMetrics: RiskMetrics is a global provider of multi-asset, position-based risk and wealth management solutions.
ISS: ISS is a provider of corporate governance and specialized financial research and analysis services to institutional investors and corporations around the world. ISS was acquired on January 11, 2007, and it facilitates the voting of proxies by institutional investors and provides in-depth research and analysis to help inform their voting decisions and assess issuer-specific risk. ISS serves approximately 2,750 clients. On August 1, 2007, ISS acquired CFRA, a leading forensic accounting research firm.

The company sells products and services primarily on an annual subscription basis and generally receives upfront subscription payments from clients. On a pro forma basis for the year ended December 31, 2006, it generated revenues of $204.5 million, Adjusted EBITDA of $56.9 million and a net loss of $4.8 million. Revenues for the first 6-months of 2007 were $110.515 million and net income was $745,000.00 after taxes. Entities affiliated with General Atlantic LLC own 28% of the company.

Jon C. Ogg
September 19, 2007

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.