WASHINGTON (July 26, 2021) – Today, Ballast Research and Hamilton Place Strategies (HPS) announced their partnership with alva, the leading stakeholder intelligence platform. The partnership was supported by a majority investment in alva by Falfurrias Capital Partners (FCP), formalizing the relationship between the leaders across corporate stakeholder management. The partnership and investment follows FCP’s earlier majority investments in Ballast Research and HPS.
Headquartered in London, UK, alva is a stakeholder intelligence platform that provides data-rich, real-time technology to companies across industries, including financial services, consumer, healthcare, and professional services. Built on award-winning Natural Language Processing technology, alva delivers the richest and most accurate insights based on the analysis of more than 25 million pieces of content every day across 100 languages, 150 countries, and over 500,000 different individual publications. Additionally, alva’s ESG Intelligence provides comprehensive analysis of how any company is performing against the SASB sector standard issues compared to their peer group.
The new partnership will enable a fully integrated business intelligence platform, providing singular consulting services that seamlessly combine primary research, data-driven reputational findings, advisory services, and monitoring capabilities.
“To perform in the new stakeholder-centric environment, the leaders we serve need rich, actionable insights covering a broad range of sources, regions, and issues,” said Ballast Research President Mike Gottlieb. “alva allows us to immediately broaden our offering for today’s leading organizations and executives in the public, private, and social sectors, while also providing the technology and capabilities needed to further build on the vision we share with our colleagues at HPS.”
“By combining the pre-eminent policymaker research firm in Ballast and the leading public affairs consultancy in HPS with alva’s technology and insights, we can produce unmatched reputational predictability and decision-ready intelligence,” said alva’s Founder and CEO Alberto Lopez-Valenzuela. “With Falfurrias’s support, we look forward to creating the industry standard for value-creating stakeholder management.”
“alva created a powerful platform based on brilliant technology, and HPS and Ballast are thrilled to be working with them,” said HPS Partner Tony Fratto. “alva will immediately allow us to deliver global solutions in multiple languages. It’s exciting to bring together technology, analytics, and strategic insights to help companies deal with their complex, dynamic stakeholder relationships.”
“Ballast, HPS, and alva bring the industry’s best strategists and thinkers together to drive the next evolution of stakeholder reputation management,” said FCP Partner Geordie Pierson. “For a market that’s been traditionally fragmented, we believe we are collectively building a comprehensive suite of services that can address all of today’s reputational challenges by combining unique, objective data insights to complement first-class advisory services.”
Although each business will maintain its own independent service offerings, support across the partnering organizations will now include public affairs, media relations, crisis and issue management, research and analysis, political and regulatory risk analysis, global thought leadership, digital strategy, corporate reputation, creative content, and media monitoring and analysis.
About alva
We support our clients to make better decisions with Stakeholder Intelligence. We analyse millions of alternative data, including media, regulator, investor, government, public and NGO sources to help our clients better understand and connect with their stakeholders. We combine AI technology with sector expertise to provide a fully integrated intelligence solution to corporations, the investment industry and advisory firms covering ESG, risk, reputation, media and board intelligence.
About Ballast Research
For nearly a decade Ballast Research has provided direct feedback from senior policymakers through quantitative and qualitative research. Ballast clients including Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits and trade associations, leverage Ballast’s data-driven insights to validate impact, identify opportunities, and determine optimal strategy and investment for future success.
About Hamilton Place Strategies
Hamilton Place Strategies (HPS) is an analytical public affairs consulting firm. We work on complex issues in highly regulated industries, partnering with clients to advance their most important priorities. The firm was founded in 2010 by partners Tony Fratto and Stuart Siciliano.
About Falfurrias Capital
Falfurrias Capital Partners is a Charlotte-based private equity investment firm founded in 2006 by Hugh McColl Jr., former chairman and CEO of Bank of America, Marc Oken, former CFO of Bank of America, and Managing Partner Ed McMahan. The firm is focused on acquiring or investing in a diverse portfolio of growth-oriented middle-market companies. By leveraging the extensive strategic and operational experience and business relationships of the firm’s principals, Falfurrias Capital Partners is positioned to be a value-added partner for both its portfolio companies and its limited partners. For more information, visit www.falfurriascapital.com.
