Clear Leisure snaps up 10pc stake in legal data firm PBV Monitor

Clear Leisure announced the acquisition of a 10% interest in PBV Monitor, an Italian company specialising in the acquisition and dissemination of data for the legal services industry, utilising proprietary market intelligence tools and dedicated search software, on Friday.

The AIM-traded firm said consideration of £0.28m would be settled by the issue of 35,365,389 new ordinary Clear Leisure shares.

It said the shares were being issued at a 21% premium to the closing market price on 27 December.

Clear Leisure said that over the past four years, PBV - trading under the brand of ‘PBV & Partners’ - had assembled and analysed the activity of more than 8,600 law firms worldwide, and more than 100,000 business lawyers in 100 jurisdictions, producing approximately 43,000 articles that had regularly been published on the Global Legal Chronicle.

PBV processed about 12,000 corporate transactions per year, Clear Leisure said.

Relevant information such as details of the law firms, partners, junior lawyers and corporates involved in each transaction and the size of the deal was stored, to offer users an “accurate and informative” environment, with tools and preliminary insights, to effectively identify and compare law firms.

PBV reported;y addressed the strategic needs of a global market for legal services, which was estimated at $849bn in 2017, and was projected to exceed $1trn in 2021.

Current competitors, such as Legal 500 and Chambers, covered only “a fraction” of the facilities available and under development by PBV, Clear Leisure claimed.

PBV was said to be implementing the use of advanced artificial intelligence text processing techniques, which would “significantly” improve the deals entry rate per year, while providing sophisticated search and matching tools for what the company described as ‘big data’, which had been built over the years by PBV & Partners.

“We are expecting to launch the extension of our offering, via the new platform, which we have spent five years developing, in the first quarter of 2019,” said PBV founder and chief executive officer Ambrogio Visconti.

“The main focus will be on the sale of premium profiles for lawyers and law firms, the sale of premium accounts to corporates for the market intelligence tools, and the organisation of events and awards.”

As part of the investment agreement, Clear Leisure would be granted a seat on the board of PBV, would be appointed as exclusive advisor to PBV regarding the possible sale of PBV from 1 January 2020 for a period of four years, and would be entitled to a 4% commission fee on the proceeds of any sale.

“We are very happy with the investment in PBV Monitor, an interactive media technology, which is consistent with the Clear Leisure board’s decision to assemble a portfolio of technology-related investments,” said Clear Leisure chairman and chief executive officer Francesco Gardin.

“PBV is already a well-established service provider to the $849bn legal industry and is now ready to launch an advanced data offering.

“Currently, PBV has 20,000 registered customers worldwide, representing a valuable asset and providing a clear indication of the increasing interest in its services.”