Founded in 1986, the New York City-based Xcitek market data division is the leading provider of corporate actions information relating to equities, warrants, corporate bonds, government, agency and municipal bonds and other financial instruments issued by US and Canadian entities.  Xcitek’s founders knew that bottom-line portfolio performance can be influenced and anticipated by announcements of corporate actions such as splits, liquidations, mergers, divestitures, acquisitions, capital changes, bankruptcies, law suits, reorganizations, name and domicile changes and distributions.  The data describing these events is voluminous, complex, hard to find, inconsistent and manually intensive to interpret and process.  Xcitek’s founders conceived designed and built a service to automatically collect, compile, process and distribute this information.  As a result, the company’s services came to be used by over 1,600 financial institutions worldwide, via electronic data feeds, proprietary web-based offerings and an extensive network of redistributors.  The Company earned numerous industry awards.

Prior to engaging M&A, the owners had been approached by several strategic and financial firms, who were interested in acquiring, investing or partnering with the Company.  The owners turned down all such approaches.  But, when one of the founders died unexpectedly, the other owners paused to reflect.  Another of the founders had already retired and a third was approaching retirement.  The owners decided it was time to explore their strategic alternatives.  They engaged M&A to advise them.