Aquiline invests in Dutch online brokerage

The financial services buyout firm, headed by former Marsh & McLennan chairman and chief executive Jeffrey Greenberg, has purchased a 5.1 percent stake in BinckBank.

Aquiline Capital Partners, a financial services-focussed private equity firm based in New York, has bought a 5.1 percent stake in Dutch online brokerage BinckBank for an undisclosed amount.

BinckBank is the market leader in online banking for investors in the Netherlands, Aquiline’s Geoffrey Kalish said in a statement. BinckBank recently acquired Alex Beleggersbank, the former online brokerage of Netherlands-based financial services provider Rabobank. Approximately 70,000 users in Belgium and the Netherlands trade on BinckBank, which plans to expand its operations to France, according to a Hoovers profile. 

Jeffrey Greenberg

Aquiline was founded in 2005 by former Marsh & McLennan chairman and chief executive Jeffrey Greenberg, who also enlisted New York-based private equity firm Venturion Capital in the enterprise.

Greenberg, the son of former embattled AIG head Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, resigned from insurance broker Marsh in October 2004 amid bid-rigging and price-fixing allegations levied by New York’s attorney general. Marsh eventually reconciled those charges via an $850 million (€532 million) settlement.

He had chaired Marsh & McLennan’s in-house buyout group MMC Capital from 1996 to 2002. MMC has since spun out of Marsh, and is now the independently run Stone Point Capital.

Aquiline closed its first fund on $1.1 billion in April 2007. The fund’s previous investments include the Ireland-based wholesale financial services firm Structured Credit Holdings and Validus Holdings, a Bermuda-based reinsurance company.