Cerved Group

Who owns Cerved Group?

Cerved Group is currently owned by CVC Capital Partners through CVC Capital Partners Fund VI (2013 vintage), since 2013. Across its history, Cerved Group has been through 2 private equity ownership periods, detailed in the timeline below.

Hand-verified · updated 2026-07-19

About Cerved Group

Cerved Group is an Italian credit-information and business-data group headquartered in San Donato Milanese, near Milan, that supplies credit risk analysis, company information, decision analytics and end-to-end credit management services to financial institutions, corporates, insurers and public administrations. It is the recognised leader in Italy for credit risk assessment and one of the country's largest independent players in business information and credit management, combining proprietary databases on Italian companies with scoring, ratings and software platforms. Its data and analytics are used by roughly 34,000 businesses and financial institutions to gauge counterparty solvency, monitor exposures and shape commercial strategy. The group operates with a workforce of around 2,600 employees.

Ownership journey

Cerved traces its origins to the 1970s within the Italian chamber-of-commerce system, while several of its component businesses, including Centrale dei Bilanci, were established in the following decade to pool corporate financial data on behalf of Italian banks. The modern group was assembled around 2009, when Clessidra, investing through Clessidra Capital Partners II alongside a co-investing sponsor, acquired a cluster of non-core information assets from a group of Italian banks and integrated Cerved with Centrale dei Bilanci, Lince, Databank, Finservice, Consit and Pitagora into a single platform. Under that ownership the enlarged group was built into the clear market leader in business information for Italian financial services. Clessidra exited in 2013 via a secondary transaction, and the group subsequently listed on Borsa Italiana in 2014.

Under PE ownership

During the Clessidra-era ownership the strategy was consolidation, folding seven historic and overlapping commercial-information agencies into one integrated group and rationalising their databases, products and sales channels. Over the holding period the business scaled materially, with revenue reaching about EUR 292 million in 2012, up roughly 9 percent on the prior year, while EBITDA rose from around EUR 100 million at formation to approximately EUR 140 million. The group also tapped the capital markets with a high-yield bond issue to fund its build-up, and expanded from pure credit information toward decision analytics and credit management. By the time of the 2013 exit Cerved had been established as the dominant provider of business and credit information to Italian banks and corporates, setting the platform for its later flotation.