February 4, 2020

ClearMacro Ltd, (“CM”), the UK-based independent investment analytics provider, today announced the completion of an investment by affiliates of British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (“BCI”).

The management and staff of CM maintain a majority shareholding in the company and CEO Mike Simcock and the executive management team remain unchanged. A representative from BCI has now joined the CM board. CM has continued to expand its capabilities through 2019 with a growing talent base, range of content partnerships (including Prattle, EPFR and Alexandria Technologies), and clients (leading pension funds, insurance companies and hedge funds). This expansion is set to gather pace following completion.

Mike Simcock (CEO, ClearMacro) commented: “With CM’s long-term future as an industrial-grade investment analytics provider secured, CM is poised to establish leadership in the burgeoning market for data analytics in the investment industry. With the capital strength of BCI behind us, we will materially complement our team, geographical presence and grow our access to additional partners and channels.

“CM’s mission is to level the playing field in data analytics for professional investors. We are committed to providing institutional investors and asset managers access to the powerful methodologies and tools employed in systematic quant investing. Investment firms need a short cut to developing future-proofed data strategies, especially given the rapidly changing underlying macro environment, the shifting relevance of various datasets, as well as the accelerating developments in technology. We do the heavy lifting of data selection and processing, helping to turn data overload into an opportunity, and enabling investors to radically reweight their time back to investment decision-making.

“This investment from BCI is an endorsement of the value of industrialising information and decision-making processes at a time when the broader industry is struggling with fee compression (arising from growth in passives and low rates) but explosive informational opportunities.

“We feel truly privileged to be working with a world-class, cross-departmental team at BCI who are forward-looking and fully understand the opportunity to employ cutting edge techniques to better mitigate investment risks and improve return profiles. Our strategic partnership with BCI will put CM in a leading position to provide distinctly open platforms which enable customers to build their own signals and strategies and to choose what information they want to integrate to power their own decision-making.”

Mihail Garchev (Vice President, Total Fund Management, BCI) commented: “BCI has in recent years firmly established our in-house investing capabilities across asset classes. However, we also constantly benchmark ourselves and seek to improve. To that end, we have decided to materially drive forward our abilities to import best-in-class data strategies and tools to support investment decision-making and risk management processes. After extensive research, we are excited to become a strategic investor in ClearMacro and look forward to supporting the company in addressing the significant opportunity in the marketplace.”

In connection with this transaction, Dentons (UK) acted as legal advisor to ClearMacro and Latham & Watkins LLP acted as legal advisor to BCI.

 

About ClearMacro

CM is a software analytics company founded by institutional investors and technologists for professional investors. The Company provides investment analytics tools to asset managers and other professional investors to make quicker, better informed, and more consistent investment decisions as well as mitigate well-documented human biases. CM selects and curates from the rapidly growing body of data (public and private, financial and market data) and then transforms the information into forward-looking investment signals, delivered via its online platform.  CM is further developing its uniquely open-ended platform that can integrate new data or client’s own data into the model. The Company serves a range of institutional investors, insurance companies, hedge funds and anticipates extending coverage to family offices and corporates.

For more information about CM please visit https://www.clearmacro.com/

 

About BCI

With C$153.4 billion of managed assets, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) is a leading provider of investment management services to British Columbia’s public sector and one of Canada’s largest asset managers. We generate the investment returns that help our institutional clients build a financially secure future. With our global outlook, we seek investment opportunities that convert savings into productive capital that will meet our clients’ risk/return requirements over time. We invest across a range of asset classes: fixed income; mortgages; public and private equity; real estate; infrastructure; and renewable resources.

For more information about BCI, please visit www.bci.ca.