Leeds Equity Partners, LLC, the New York-based private equity fund focused exclusively on investing in the Knowledge Industries, announced today that it has made an equity investment in Covenant Review, LLC (“Covenant Review” or the “Company”) in partnership with Company executives Adam Cohen and Paul Ciasullo. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
JEGI CLARITY (www.jegiclarity.com), the leading independent investment bank for the global media, information, marketing and technology sectors headquartered in New York, NY, represented Covenant Review in this transaction and acted as its exclusive financial advisor.
Covenant Review was founded in 2006 by Adam Cohen, a noted capital markets lawyer, to provide institutional investors and other bond and loan market participants with unparalleled understanding of the legal documentation governing their securities investments. The New York-based firm is relied upon by investors worldwide, including hedge funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, broker-dealers, pension funds and endowments, as the authority on bond and loan covenants. Customers use Covenant Review’s services as risk management tools, sources of investment ideas, benchmarking tools to compare deal structures and investment process and workflow management solutions. Cohen and Ciasullo will continue to lead the business.
“We are tremendously thankful to our customers for the great trust that they have placed in us for assisting in their risk management and alpha generation,” said Cohen. “We serve our customers by explaining the actionable possibilities of legal documents, which otherwise can be very difficult for investors to understand in context. We look forward to increasing the scale and breadth of our product offerings and geographic footprint with the support of our new partners at Leeds Equity.”
“We are enthusiastic about partnering with Covenant Review,” said Robert A. Bernstein, Senior Managing Director and Co-Founder of Leeds Equity Partners. “The Company provides an invaluable resource for investment professionals looking to integrate a smart and reliable solution with their own investment process.”
Ciasullo said, “I always wished for a better, more efficient manner with which to understand credit documents and navigate securities precedents when I was a bond trader. Covenant Review has answered this credit market need for investors with a compelling information services solution. Leeds Equity’s partnership is a testament to the strong platform that the entire Covenant Review team has built and will serve as a critical resource in helping drive our next stage of growth.”
“Leeds Equity’s investment in Covenant Review will create a research and analytics growth platform within the financial information services sector,” said Scott VanHoy, Principal at Leeds Equity Partners. “Management and Leeds Equity have identified a number of organic and inorganic opportunities to scale the Company, and we look forward to working in concert with Adam and Paul to execute on those growth initiatives.”
The JEGI CLARITY bankers were the ideal guides for our quickly growing company to find the right partner for the next stage of our business expansion. JEGI CLARITY brought bidders to the table that we had never considered, and a valuable perspective in thinking about how the industry will unfold in the years ahead. JEGI CLARITY believed in our business and our vision, and we believed in JEGI CLARITY’s process and expertise, and from that the range of options created for us and the results were outstanding.
Adam Cohen, Founder, Covenant Review