One Sponsor, Three Bets

Permira’s decade in fund administration and corporate services

I research deals in this market week to week, partly for work and partly out of personal interest. Regional ones that get little exposure online, and the ones that make the headlines. One name keeps repeating in fund administration and corporate services. Permira has stayed in the sector for a decade, and it keeps paying as if the work inside these firms can still be changed.

Permira has backed three of the most important businesses in fund administration and corporate services in the last ten years. Tricor in 2016, Alter Domus in 2017 and JTC, completed on 1 September 2026 alongside CPP Investments.¹ Each deal has been written up on its own. Read as a sequence, they are the same bet, repriced.

The numbers first.

Tricor, 2016. Announced consideration of $835 million, reported at the time as about 15 times EBITDA of roughly $55 million.² Sale to Baring Private Equity Asia agreed in 2021 at an enterprise value of $2.76 billion.³ Reuters reported that Tricor's chief executive said revenue had doubled and EBITDA had grown two and a half times during Permira’s ownership. Reuters put the exit at a little over 20 times estimated 2021 EBITDA. AVCJ subsequently reported approximately 23 times.⁴

Alter Domus, 2017. Permira partnered with the three founders, agreed in 2016 and completed in 2017, for a minority stake. The entry price was not publicly disclosed. When Cinven's investment was announced in March 2024, the enterprise value was €4.9 billion and, by Permira’s account, revenue, EBITDA and headcount had all grown more than five times.⁵

JTC, 2025. A recommended cash offer of 1,340 pence, a 49 percent premium to the closing price before Permira’s first offer, an enterprise value of £2.7 billion, and 26.2 times pre-IFRS 16 adjusted EBITDA of £100 million for the twelve months to June 2025.⁶ Six proposals from Permira, four from Warburg Pincus, and a board that recommended the sixth.

Fifteen at entry, a little over twenty at exit, twenty-six at entry. Same sponsor, same sector, three prints on three different bases. The missing print is Alter Domus at entry, where the valuation was not disclosed in the original announcement.

2016. Buy the leader and standardise it

Tricor became available because Bank of East Asia, its majority owner, was under pressure from an activist.⁷ Permira won a competitive process for what it called a rare chance to own a market leader in a highly fragmented industry. Two thousand staff, thirty-seven cities, twenty jurisdictions, doing corporate secretarial, accounting and payroll across Asia.

Permira’s account of the five years that followed is a list of the classic levers. Ten acquisitions, workflow automation, a shared service centre, a rebuilt sales organisation to cross-sell across jurisdictions.⁸ Consolidate the fragmented market, move the routine work to a centre, sell more to the clients you already have. That was the playbook most operators in this sector ran through the 2010s, myself included, and it worked. Fifteen times was called expensive at the time. It was the price of a leader with that playbook in front of it.

2017. Buy the mix shift

Alter Domus was a different bet. Permira describes it as a transformation from a Luxembourg corporate services provider into a leading global fund administrator.⁹ The value lay in expanding its alternative fund administration business globally, as allocations to private markets were growing. Every new fund needed administering, and the firms already serving the largest managers grew with them.

Five times revenue and EBITDA in seven years is what that looks like. By 2024 the market priced it accordingly, and Permira kept a significant stake rather than sell out.

Both bets were priced on the shape of the market. Fragmentation in one case, growth in the other. The operating model inside the business was a lever to pull along the way.

2025. Buy the operating model

The growth was already there. Since its 2018 listing JTC had grown revenue from £59.8 million to £305.4 million by 2024 and underlying EBITDA more than sevenfold, with net organic growth of 11.3 percent in 2024 and 8.5 percent in 2025 and the rest from acquisitions.¹⁰ The public market valued the equity at £1.7 billion on 28 August 2025, the last close before the offer period began.¹¹ Permira paid £2.3 billion for the equity, and an enterprise value of £2.7 billion.

The offer document is blunt about why the board recommended a take-private. It lists the constraints of being listed. Equity for large deals is hard to raise, public markets want less leverage than PE-owned competitors, and early returns are expected. The board wanted to make a meaningful investment in AI and technology, and it expected that investment could hurt operating profit, EBITDA margin and free cash flow in the short term, and it was concerned about the possible share-price reaction. Better, the board concluded, to do it privately with Permira.¹²

JTC's underlying margin was 33 percent in 2024 and 32.6 percent in 2025.¹³ On my reading of the price, 26 times on a business the public market had at £1.7 billion only works if the operating model changes. More capacity per person as technology takes on routine processing. The investment has to include training, so people can develop into roles with more judgement, review and client responsibility. Volume can then grow without headcount rising in proportion. The completion statement sets out investment in next-generation technology and AI capabilities, alongside continued acquisitions focused on North America and Europe.¹⁴

There is a reason the bet has to sit there now. The growth that priced Alter Domus in 2017 is no longer a given. Closed-end private equity fundraising fell 17 percent in 2025,¹⁷ private credit vehicles restricted redemptions through early 2026, and in June Partners Group capped withdrawals on an $8.6 billion evergreen private equity fund after requests reached nearly 10 percent of net asset value.¹⁵ The JTC board had already cited macroeconomic uncertainty and its effect on new fund launches in its November 2025 recommendation.¹² At the same time, gates, redemption queues and continuation vehicles mean more administrative work per dollar of assets. Less new volume and more work per unit is a combination that mostly rewards one kind of firm. The one whose platform handles routine complexity and whose people are trained to handle the exceptions. Twenty-six times is a bet on being that firm.

What the sequence tells you

The multiple followed the thesis. Tricor was a good company at 15 times and a good company at 20. The simplest explanation for the difference is what the next owner thought they could do with it. A services firm is priced as whatever story the market currently tells about services firms, and that story has changed twice in a decade.

The current story is the operating model, and it has a cost attached. The JTC board said the AI investment could hurt margins before it helped them. That is something every administrator and corporate services firm now has to hold. The transformation that justifies the price depresses the number the price is calculated on. Anyone who has sat in a monthly review while a delivery centre was being built knows exactly what that year looks like. Private ownership pays for that gap.

Permira sold Tricor to Baring Private Equity Asia, which merged it with Vistra in 2023 into a $6.5 billion platform.¹⁶ It kept a stake in Alter Domus when Cinven came in. It has over a decade in what it calls FACTS, fund administration, corporate and trust services, and four decades in services. Permira did not leave the sector. It changed the price it would pay inside it.

The next transaction in this sector will be priced on whether the change has actually happened. Revenue per person, the share of routine work that runs on the platform, how many reviewers the firm needs as preparation becomes automated, and whether training is turning that capacity into stronger judgement and better client service.

Which leaves every firm in this market with a question to ask about itself. Are you priced as a leader to be consolidated, as a mix shift into growth, or as an operating model? The first two are stories about your market. The third is a story about you, and my reading of JTC is that the premium depends on being able to change it.

Used a model to chase citations and tidy the notes. It has never built a delivery centre (at least not yet).

Notes

Permira, JTC completion, 1 September 2026. Source
AVCJ, Tricor acquisition, October 2016. Source
AVCJ, Tricor sale, November 2021. Source
AVCJ deal-focus and Reuters/Euronews, November 2021. Reuters: just over 20 times estimated 2021 EBITDA. AVCJ: 23 times BPEA is said to have paid. Estimates unreconciled. Source
Permira, Alter Domus partial monetisation, and Alter Domus's release, March 2024. Source
JTC/Permira, Rule 2.7 offer announcement, 10 November 2025. Source
AVCJ, Tricor acquisition. Elliott's pressure on Bank of East Asia. Source
Offer announcement, Tricor track record. Source
Offer announcement, Alter Domus track record. Source
Offer announcement and JTC FY2025 results. FY17 baseline precedes the 2018 IPO. Announced/completed: Tricor entry October 2016/March 2017, exit November 2021/June 2022. Cinven March/October 2024. Source
Offer announcement, JTC market value on 28 August 2025. Source
Offer announcement, board rationale. Source
Margin calculations from JTC's reported results: FY2024 £101.7m/£305.4m = 33.3%. FY2025 £124.5m/£381.9m = 32.6%. Published 26.2 times: EV less £51m lease liabilities at 30 June 2025, divided by £100m LTM June 2025 pre-IFRS 16 adjusted EBITDA. Offer Appendix 2. The rounded £2.7bn headline does not reproduce the multiple. Source
Permira, JTC technology and expansion plans, 1 September 2026. Source
Bloomberg, Partners Group redemptions, 3 June 2026. CNBC, 4 June 2026. CRS IN12674, private-credit restrictions, 2026. Source
Reuters/MarketScreener, Vistra and Tricor merger, July 2023. Source
McKinsey, Global Private Markets Report 2026. Global closed-end PE fundraising fell 17% in 2025. Alternative structures grew. Source

Originally published on LinkedIn, 30 September 2026.