January saw 26 PE-backed acquisitions across Europe, representing a 8% increase year-over-year.
Number of announced PE-backed acquisitions over the past 12 months*
- Number of PE-backed Acquisitions
Roll-Up Market Insights
With 26 acquisitions, the number of PE-backed acquisitions increased by 8% compared to the previous month.
With 10 acquisitions, the UK was the country with the most PE-backed activity, followed by Italy and Spain.
Kiloutou Group was the most active acquirer with two acquisitions.
Food and Beverage (8), InsurTech (7) and Consulting (5) were the most mentioned acquired industries.
This month’s case study: ClearScore – Achieving greater financial wellbeing
Founded in 2015 in London, UK, ClearScore is a fintech company that provides free credit scores, credit reports, and financial product recommendations to consumers.
Backed by Invus Opportunities, QED Investors and Lead Edge Capital ClearScore has pursued an active buy-and-build strategy, announcing 3 acquisitions since 2020.
- ClearScore's Acquisitions
Its latest move came in January 2026, with the acquisition of Acre (founded in 2018 in London, UK). Acre is an all-in-one mortgage & protection platform.
This acquisition enables ClearScore to rapidly scale its proprietary data platform. By combining credit scores with transaction data from open banking, the company creates a centralized monetization engine that optimizes conversion rates for lenders and maximizes customer retention.
ClearScore’s Strategy for global leadership
Clearscore’s most recent PE-backed acquisition of Acre demonstrates the company’s ambitions to become the leading credit data ecosystem through targeted technology acquisitions and market entries. By integrating open banking specialists, the company is transforming itself from a pure score provider to a data-rich marketplace that bridges the gap between consumers and financial institutions worldwide.
Case study:
This acquisition enables ClearScore to advance its global leadership ambitions in data-driven credit decisioning by expanding its open-banking capabilities, strengthening its proprietary data platform, and scaling a centralized credit-data marketplace that improves lender conversion and deepens customer retention.
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In 2015, ClearScore was founded in London with a focus on providing free credit scores and improving transparency for consumers.
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Since 2021, Invus joined with a $200mn investment to fuel inorganic growth and build a global M&A pipeline, including the acquisition of Money Dashboard (open banking) and the integration of DriveScore to expand into adjacent data use cases.
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In January 2026, ClearScore aquired Acre as ongoing completion of the integration of global data assets to monetize over 20 million users worldwide in credit brokerage.
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These moves enable ClearScore to scale a data-rich credit marketplace by combining credit scores with open-banking data, improving lender conversion and deepening user retention as it expands internationally.
*All data from CrunchBase, as of February 3, 2026.
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