ICapital to Acquire Citi Global Alternatives and Collaborate With Citi Wealth

Global FinTech platform iCapital said Tuesday (May 13) that it will acquire Citi’s indirect subsidiary, Citi Global Alternatives.

Citi Global Alternatives is the adviser to Citi Wealth’s global alternative investment fund platform, iCapital said in a Tuesday press release.

When the transaction is completed, iCapital will manage and operate the fund platform, while Citi will continue to distribute the funds and offer guidance to its clients, according to the release.

ICapital also said in the release that it will provide a team dedicated to Citi Wealth that will assist with global sales and service enablement to support the growth of Citi’s alternatives program.

“ICapital’s technology platform will streamline the operations and management of their current and future alternative investment funds platform,” iCapital Chairman and CEO Lawrence Calcano said in the release. “Additionally, we will enhance Citi Wealth’s global sales capabilities with a dedicated alternative investment specialist team.”

Daniel O’Donnell, head of Citi Wealth Alternatives and Investment Manager Solutions, said in the release: “Citi Wealth already has a strong working relationship with iCapital on alternative solutions, and we’re excited to expand our relationship to bring greater integration of iCapital’s market-leading digital capabilities to our advisers, bankers, investment counselors and clients.”

ICapital said in January that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire “reusable financial identity” provider Parallel Markets. The company said the move would enable iCapital to streamline digital identity, investment onboarding and compliance verifications.

“Parallel Markets has pioneered software that supports a reusable investor passport, streamlining these duplicative processes for advisers, investors and fund managers,” Calcano said at the time in a press release. “As we continue to evolve our tech stack, we will enhance automated entry for alternative investing and leverage AI and machine learning to offer a complete, intuitive end-to-end solution.”

In October, iCapital announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire AI-driven technology firm AltExchange.

“AltExchange has developed one of the most advanced document retrieval solutions that’s connected to sophisticated mapping, routing technology and LLM [large language model] based document extraction,” Calcano said when announcing the deal in a press release. “This acquisition complements the investments we are making in our internal R&D to further enhance our data management capabilities.”