Evercore To Acquire ISI Group

(RTTNews) - Evercore (EVR) announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the operating businesses of ISI International Strategy & Investment or ISI.

Evercore said it will also acquire the approximately 40% interest in its Institutional Equities business not currently owned by the company.

The combined business, which will be known as Evercore ISI Institutional Equities, will be one of the two leading independent equity research, sales and agency trading businesses in the U.S., the company said.

Evercore stated that it will issue up to about 8 million share equivalents in the two transactions, with almost 70% of the share equivalent consideration dependent on the financial performance of the combined business over the five years following closing. The transactions are expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2014, subject to receiving required regulatory approvals.

Evercore and ISI plan to merge their research, sales and agency trading operations upon closing, creating a truly elite equity research, sales and agency trading platform.

The company noted that Ed Hyman, the Chairman and Founder of ISI, will become a Vice Chairman of Evercore and Chairman of the combined Equities business, which will be run by an Executive Committee comprised of Ed Hyman, Vinayak Singh, currently President of ISI, and Charles Myers, the current head of Evercore's Institutional Equities business.