Jacksonville-based mortgage technology company Black Knight Inc. is talking to private equity firms about a possible buyout, according to an April 5 report by Bloomberg news.
Citing unidentified people familiar with the talks, Bloomberg said Black Knight hasn’t made any decisions about a sale and could remain an independent public company.
Black Knight’s main business, which is processing loans for mortgage lenders, traces its roots back 60 years to a Jacksonville company called Computer Power Inc.
It grew into the largest company in the field and now provides processing services for 63% of all U.S. first mortgage loans, according to its annual report.
The business has changed hands several times in the last three decades.
Computer Power was sold to Alltel Corp. in 1991. In 2003, title insurance company Fidelity National Financial Inc. bought Alltel’s financial processing services business.
After the buyout, Fidelity moved its corporate headquarters from Santa Barbara, California, to Jacksonville.
Fidelity spun off its financial processing businesses into a separate company called Fidelity National Information Services Inc., or FIS, in 2006. Two years after that, FIS spun off the mortgage processing business into a separate company called Lender Processing Services Inc.
Fidelity bought LPS back in 2014 but then spun it off again as an independent company with an initial public offering in 2015.
Black Knight remains headquartered on Riverside Avenue in Jacksonville alongside Fidelity National Financial and FIS.
The company employs about 6,400 people, according to its annual report, with more than 2,000 employees in Jacksonville.