Control Risks spins off eDiscovery unit backed by Beringer Capital
Control Risks, the London-headquartered strategic intelligence and security firm, has agreed to spin off its Discovery + Data Insights and Forensics divisions into a new standalone company. Private equity firm Beringer Capital will back the newly formed entity, which will initially trade as Control Risks – Compliance, Investigations & eDiscovery. Control Risks will retain a meaningful equity stake and a continuing strategic partnership with the business.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions. Until completion, both divisions will continue to operate as part of Control Risks without disruption to clients.
The deal
Georges Sabongui, an industry veteran with more than two decades of experience in legal technology and eDiscovery services, has been appointed chief executive of the new entity. The existing leadership team, including partners Michele Wiener, Brad Kolacinski, John Kim and Brian Mich, will transfer to the new company alongside the broader Discovery + Data Insights and Forensics teams across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.
Sabongui said the spinout gives the business the focus and capital to invest more aggressively in talent, technology and geographic expansion. "Our goal is to build a company that competes at the highest level globally while preserving the high-touch client service, deep expertise, integrity and trusted relationships that have defined these businesses within Control Risks," he said.
Beringer Capital managing partner Gil Ozir cited the combination of global scale, specialist expertise and experienced leadership as the investment thesis. Beringer focuses on middle-market companies in technology and information-led services, and the new entity fits squarely within that mandate.
No financial terms were disclosed, including deal size, valuation or the precise size of Control Risks' retained equity stake.
Market context
The eDiscovery and legal technology market has attracted sustained private equity interest over the past several years, as law firms and corporate legal departments face mounting pressure to manage ever-larger volumes of structured and unstructured data in regulatory investigations, litigation and compliance programmes. The sector overlaps significantly with enterprise software and data analytics, with vendors competing on AI-assisted document review, cloud-native processing capacity and specialist forensic capabilities.
Major players in the space include Relativity, Epiq, Consilio and Kroll, among others. The new Control Risks entity is already a RelativityOne Gold Partner, which signals a degree of technical integration with the dominant review platform in the market.
Carve-outs of this kind are a common growth lever in professional services: a standalone structure allows the new company to pursue its own acquisitions, build bespoke technology without competing internally for budget, and present a cleaner proposition to clients who may overlap with Control Risks' broader risk-consulting work. Retaining an equity stake also allows the parent firm to capture upside if the new entity scales successfully.
Regulatory complexity is a tailwind for the sector. Enforcement activity across financial crime, sanctions, data-protection and antitrust has increased in key markets, and multinational corporations are investing more heavily in both internal compliance infrastructure and third-party investigative support. The EU's NIS2 Directive and DORA, which impose stricter incident-reporting and operational-resilience requirements on firms operating in Europe, are expected to generate additional demand for forensic technology and eDiscovery services through 2027 and beyond.