Capitolis has agreed to purchase eSecLending in a $200 million all-cash deal, a move that adds securities lending to the fintech firm’s platform and widens its reach among the world’s largest asset owners.
Announced on September 29, 2026, the transaction would combine Capitolis’s financial-resource optimization tools with eSecLending’s long-standing securities-lending franchise.
eSecLending, an independent agent founded more than two decades ago, works with pension funds, insurers, and asset managers, arranging loans of their securities to major global banks.
Over 26 years it has assembled a broad network that includes institutional investors as well as every major bank and prime broker, supporting securities financing activity and recent growth.
Capitolis said the addition of lending capabilities would sit alongside its existing solutions in resource optimization, repo, and financing.
Together the businesses are intended to give banks and institutional investors a broader set of tools for improving efficiency, managing balance-sheet resources, and finding new opportunities across those markets.
The deal also brings Capitolis access to eSecLending’s established roster of large asset owners and supplies additional infrastructure, expertise, and scale.
Company leaders framed the combination as a natural extension of an existing relationship.
Okan Pekin, president of Capitolis, noted that the two firms have known each other for years and have already collaborated on new market solutions.
He cited the strength of eSecLending’s client ties, the quality of its operations, and the depth of its team.
Craig Starble, chief executive of eSecLending, said the company was proud of what it had built and saw Capitolis as a partner with global reach, a focus on innovation, and relationships with leading financial institutions.
Joining Capitolis, he added, would allow eSecLending to expand the products it offers clients.
Gil Mandelzis, Capitolis’s founder and chief executive, called the purchase transformational.
He pointed to strong organic growth in Capitolis’s current lines of business and described eSecLending as a complementary addition that matches clients’ changing needs.
The company will welcome Starble, the eSecLending staff, and their clients into the Capitolis network as it widens its product set and seeks to speed growth.
The deal is Capitolis’s fourth strategic acquisition in five years.Capitolis is buying eSecLending from Parthenon Capital and the firm’s management team.
As part of the same transaction, Parthenon is making an investment in Capitolis.
Closing remains subject to customary conditions, including regulatory approvals and antitrust clearance. eSecLending (Europe) Limited is excluded from the sale but will continue to serve the acquired business.
Financial and legal advisers on the Capitolis side included FT Partners and WilmerHale.
eSecLending was advised by Berenson & Company, Raymond James, Troutman Pepper Locke, and Debevoise & Plimpton.
The agreement reflects a broader pattern in capital-markets technology: platforms that began with balance-sheet and resource optimization are now stitching together adjacent financing activities so that banks and large investors can manage securities, cash, and collateral in a more integrated way. If completed, the combination would give Capitolis both a new product line and a direct channel to some of the largest institutional asset owners.