Investors Led By Blackstone Increase Their Investment in Acrisure
Investors Blackstone’s GSO Capital Partners and Tactical Opportunities businesses (“Blackstone”), Partners Group, and Harvest Partners SCF announced an increase in their investment of Acrisure bring the grand total of their combined investment to approximately $2 billion of preferred equity in the company. As a result of the announcement, Acrisure’s valuation is now considered more than $7 billion and, pro forma for this transaction, Acrisure remains over 83% owned by its management team and agency partners.
In commenting on the announcement, Greg Williams, Acrisure’s President and Chief Executive Officer and co-founder said,
The increased investment by our existing investors is a strong endorsement of our growth strategy and represents another exciting chapter for Acrisure. The additional capital and resources will significantly benefit our company as we continue to grow organically and pursue additional M&A opportunities. Over the past two years, we have grown enterprise value from $2.9 billion at the time of the MBO in 2016 to over $7 billion today.
Further, we have strengthened our position as a leading global provider of insurance solutions and continued to build a pipeline of culturally compatible agency prospects that we look forward to welcoming into the Acrisure family. Importantly, the company continues to be primarily employee owned, with over 83% ownership in the hands of employees.”
Acrisure’s Evolution Over the Past Three Years
While Acrisure does not have a large presence in Massachusetts, it has a much larger presence around the rest of the country with over 400 Agency Partners with locations in 32 states, seven international locations, and approximately 5,600 employees.
Founded in Michigan in 2005, Acrisure was acquired by Genstar in 2013. Upon its acquisition, the company embarked on an ambitious campaign to expand both its geographic footprint and insurance offerings throughout the country.
Since then, it has grown from $650 million in revenue to approximately $1.5 billion. A large portion of its growth can be attributed to the impressive number of acquisitions it has made over the past five years. As one of leading acquirers of agencies throughout the U.S., it completed 92 acquisitions in 2017 and has expectations of exceeding more than 100 acquisitions by year-end 2018.
For those interested in learning more about Acrisure, please refer to Agency Checklists’ January 2017 article entitled, ” Why This Well-Known Mass. Agent Signed On With Acrisure.