CapitalSphere Launches Expansion of Deal Platform

The Internet age is automating everything from postal workers to bank tellers to drive-thru order-takers. Are the bankers next?

Today, CapitalSphere, which operates from offices in New York and San Diego, revealed it will substantially expand its proprietary M&A platform to include a broader base of clients, both buyers and sellers. Already its marketplace hosts 3,000 potential transactions for more than 300 investors, which vary in size and represent an aggregate $60 billion in buying power.

Here, the sellers control who gets access to their books, as a majority of the available companies and assets on CapitalSphere are privately-held family companies, says director Nick Chini. The marketplace includes companies in health care, tech, industrials, infrastructure, energy, and food and beverage spaces, Chini says, as well as a number of industry sub-verticals.

“It is the typical deal a private equity firm is out there looking for,” he told peHUB. “It is our hope we’ll be viewed as the new alternative to move an asset.”

Potential buyers have their targets vetted by CapitalSphere’s staff of nearly three dozen professionals, whose job it is to verify and quantify the deal opportunities presented through the developin marketplace. The search system that would evolve into CapitalSphere began as the proprietary deal database operated by Bainbridge Consulting. Is now being extended to potential buyers for a fee, as well as a percentage based on the size of the transaction. Chini tells peHUB that CapitalSphere’s offerings range from micro cap deals to large cap entities worth up to $750 million. It isn’t just outright M&A that PE pros can peruse at the new marketplace; growth equity and debt transactions are also offered.

And the trend that could automate some smaller I-banks right out of the business isn’t just confined to the U.S., either.

In Switzerland, DealMarket, an online platform that aims to keep deal opportunities flowing to PE pros and advisors, launched last week. Sellers have to pay to promote deals (a paltry sum of $100 a month) and private-equity professionals get a free ride when looking at potential direct and secondary investment opportunities.

Now, we don’t believe for a second the banking community will take be automated out of their offices and paychecks lying down. However, the industry might have to smile and dial a little more often to keep ahead of their binary code-based competitors.