Searchspace in secondary buyout

Searchspace, the risk monitoring solution provider to the financial services industry that assists in preventing money laundering and fraud, has been sold in what is effectively a secondary investor situation, to Warburg Pincus for an undisclosed sum. The original investment was made over a series of funding rounds by a group of largely European venture capital backers.

Searchspace was founded in 1993 by a group of academics from the Intelligent Systems Lab at University College London and went on to raise its first round of institutional funding in 1999 from 3i, which invested E3m and others who bought the total investment in that round to E9m. There was a further expansion round in 2000 and again in August last year. Other investors joining alongside 3i included ISIS Equity Partners, Baronsmead VCT2 plc, HSBC Technology Funds (via Montagu Private Equity) and Scottish Equity Partners.