TransUnion to acquire majority of Neustar for $3.1B

All-cash deal expected to close in fourth quarter

Published September 13, 2021 by Katherine Schulte

Chicago-based consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Reston-based identity management tech company Neustar Inc.’s marketing, fraud and communications businesses for $3.1 billion in cash. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

The Neustar acquisition is expected to generate approximately $575 million in revenue and $115 million in adjusted EBITDA in 2021, according to a TransUnion news release.

The acquisition will help TransUnion diversify from credit solutions by adding complementary digital marketing and fraud mitigation capabilities, according to the news release.

“TransUnion and Neustar share a similar strategic vision, culture and focus on building innovative identity-based solutions which enable trusted connections between companies and people,” Neustar President and CEO Charlie Gottdiener said in a statement.

Following the sale’s close, Neustar Security Solutions, which focuses on cloud security solutions, will become a portfolio company of San Francisco-based private equity firm Golden Gate Capital and GIC, a firm managing Singapore’s foreign reserves, the company announced Monday.

Founded in 2006, Neustar Security Solutions has more than 235 employees in Virginia.

Neustar was formerly the Communications Industry Services (CIS) operating unit within Lockheed Martin and was incorporated in 1998. In 2005, the company went public, but in 2017, a group led by Golden Gate Capital and GIC bought the company for about $1.8 billion and took it private.

Since 2001, Neustar has operated the official country code domain of the United States (.US), and in 2019, it won a 10-year U.S. Department of Commerce contract to continue doing so. Neustar owns Verisign Public DNS, a free domain name system.

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