Australian real-time media monitoring company Streem is being acquired by global communications intelligence company Cision.
The deal, whose commercial terms have not been revealed, means that most media monitoring in Australia will be under the control of offshore businesses.
Streem, founded in 2017 CEO Elgar Welch, a former staffer in the prime minister’s office, and CTO Antoine Sabourin, was seen as a start-up challenger.
The biggest player, former ASX-listed Isentia, was sold for $67 million to UK-based Access Intelligence earlier this year.
Another service, Meltwater, is Norwegian.
The local company is now John Croll, a former CEO of Isentia, who resurfaced last year to launch a new player, Truescope. However, he has been concentrating in international markets and doesn't currently have media monitoring in Australia.
The latest sale will see 100% of Streem shares go to Cision, witth headquarters in Chicago and 5,000 staff across 24 countries. It owns the media release distribution service PR Newswire.
The Streem brand and platform -- which services the majority of the market’s major government departments, banks, airlines, telecommunications and energy companies -- will continue in Australia and New Zealand under its current leadership team and local staff.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022 and is subject to clearance by Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) in the United States.
Streem CEO Elgar Welch: “With more than 100 local staff servicing over 400 leading clients, Streem has grown faster than we ever could have imagined thanks to great tech, strong support from customers and an incredible local team,
"Backed by Cision, we'll continue to build upon that growth, delivering new tools and products to help communications teams work smarter."
Cision CEO Abel Clark: “Streem has quickly established itself as the customer preferred media intelligence platform in the ANZ market.
"Streem's customers will benefit enormously from Cision's global reach and we're excited to be able to offer a full-suite of monitoring, distribution, insights and social media solutions in ANZ that both our local and global customers can benefit from."
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