Broadridge Financial Solutions said it agreed to acquire NewRiver, which operates and maintains a proprietary database of public documents on mutual funds and pioneered the electronic prospectus.
Broadridge, which has built infrastructure that underpins proxy services for roughly 90 percent of public companies and mutual funds in North America, said it will purchase electronic disclosure specialist NewRiver for $77 million.
The merger agreement was signed Monday night and approved by both firms’ boards.
The transactions should close this month, Broadridge said.
NewRiver, founded in 1995, developed the first electronic prospectus, Broadridge said. It has been a supplier to Broadridge for 10 years and NewRiver’s customers include mutual funds, variable annuity insurers, retirement plan administrators and brokerage firms. NewRiver is a leader in helping clients transition from paper to electronic disclosure and has been an important supplier to Broadridge for nearly 10 years.
NewRiver parses, tags and associates all documents on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR online database by
The acquisition will allow Broadbridge to better serve its brokerage and insurance customers with improved document delivery services, as well as print-on-demand capabilities, particularly for summary prospecti, said senior vice president Geoff de Lesseps.
Mutual fund, retirement plan and annuity product providers also will benefit by being able to send out “intelligent” documents, that deliver only those prospecti or other pieces of information that are relevant to the investments that investors actually possess, said de Lesseps.
And Broadridge expects to make use of NewRiver’s FundPoint database, which extracts data from prospecti automatically and makes it available for other uses, such as compliance reports to regulators, de Lesseps said.
"Combining the best-of-breed compliance communication tools and technology of our two organizations will enable us to provide a broader and deeper set of compliance communication solutions for our brokerage, mutual fund, and annuity and retirement plan administrator clients," said Robert Schifellite, president, Investor Communication Solutions at Broadridge in the company’s announcement of the transaction.
NewRiver's work force, located in Andover, Mass. and New Delhi, India, will become part of Broadridge's Investor Communication Solutions division.
