Insurance brokerage Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc. (MMC) has put Kroll, its corporate investigations division, up for sale for about $1.3 billion, according to a report in the Financial Times on Monday.
According to the FT report, the sale has attracted private equity firms including the Carlyle Group, Apax Partners and General Atlantic. These firms entered bids by the deadline for first expressions of interest in late February, while BCPartners might be a potential buyer alongside one or two trade bidders, the report noted, citing people familiar with the situation.
Other expressions of interest for Kroll include from its founder, Jules Kroll, who sold the business to Marsh in 2004 for $1.9 billion. The founder of Kroll recently launched a new boutique investigations firm called K2. He no longer owns a significant stake in Marsh.
Since its founding in 1972, Kroll has expanded beyond private investigation and security services into all areas of corporate risk mitigation including background screening, business intelligence, market intelligence, forensic accounting, electronic discovery, and data recovery. Almost since it was bought by Marsh & McLennan, there have been rumors that Kroll was a poor strategic fit and that the insurer was considering selling it.
Kroll is headquartered in New York with offices in more than 60 cities across 29 countries, The firm has about 3,000 employees and serves a global clientele of law firms.
In early February, Marsh & McLennan reported a profit for the fourth quarter that halved from last year, hampered by legal settlement charges. Fourth-quarter net income attributable to the company was $38 million or $0.07 per share, down from $80 million or $0.15 per share in the year-ago quarter. Quarterly revenues advanced 3% to $2.73 billion from $2.64 billion in the same period of the previous year.
Kroll's revenue for the fourth quarter improved 1% to $169 million. Ontrack, Kroll's litigation support and data recovery business, generated 19% growth in underlying revenue, while risk mitigation and response revenue declined 21% and background screening dropped 7%. For fiscal year 2009, Kroll's revenue declined 16% to $667 million.
MMC closed Monday's regular trading session at $23.72, down $0.07 or 0.29% on a volume of 2.20 million shares.
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