news: mergers & acquisitions
IBS Journal March 2015
Crealogix acquires MBA Systems to gain UK foothold
Crealogix, a Swiss provider of front-end software for retail and private banks and wealth managers, has expanded to the UK with the acquisition of a local supplier, MBA Systems, which specialises in bro- kerage and trading services technology. The UK entity is now known as Crealogix MBA, and there are plans to ‘loosely cou- ple’ the complementary systems of Creal- ogix and MBA, according to Richard Drat- va, chief strategy officer and co-founder of Crealogix. Crealogix is established in its home
market of Switzerland and neighbour- ing Germany, and its 2014 internation- al expansion strategy also took the ven- dor to the markets of Singapore and the UK. It set up small subsidiaries in both locations, but as the UK was deemed ‘of most importance’, Crealogix carried out a market review to find a suitable compa- ny to acquire, with the help of a specialist advisor, Goldenhill. ‘We were looking for a company that was active in the digital banking area, like us, that offered a host- ed solution and had a complementary set of products to ours,’ says Dratva. Size was also important, he adds
(Crealogix has 300 people on the pay- roll, and MBA Systems has 50). ‘MBA fit all our requirements.’ Mike Bradford, chief
is some overlap with Crealogix’s function- ality, ‘this area is much simpler in Swit- zerland than the UK,’ comments Dratva. MBA Systems’ solution will be taken to the Swiss market, whilst those of Creal- ogix, which cover a wide range of mobile and online banking functionality, will be offered in the UK. As mentioned earlier, there will be ‘loose coupling’ of the sys- tems. ‘We want to keep our combined offering modular,’ he explains. ‘The com- bined solution will be available soon.’ Crealogix MBA remains a separate
Richard Dratva, Crealogix
executive of MBA Systems, comments that the vendor was not considering inorgan- ic growth when Crealogix approached it in 2014 (‘we get approached by various companies regarding a sale at least once a year,’ he notes), but Crealogix’s case was compelling. Both companies operate in the wealth management space, working with private banks, investment and asset managers and brokers. MBA Systems’ offering is strong on the brokerage and trading services side, and although there
Fresh talks of Vista Equity Partners looking to sell Misys
Talks of the sale of Misys have flared up again, following a few months of calm. The rumours first surfaced last autumn, when the Financial Times reported on Misys’ owner, Vista Equity Partners, hir- ing bankers to look for buyers and also explore a possible IPO. The vendor was tight-lipped about this development at the time and continues to be so now regarding the reports from Sky News that Singaporean state-owned investment firm, Temasek Holdings, is among inter- ested parties. Canadian pension funds and buy-out firms have also been cited as potential bidders. In its current form, Misys emerged in
20
2012 as a result of Vista bringing together the Misys business and the Thomson Reuters-derived trade and risk busi- ness. The combined entity gained a new organisational structure and leadership, and the products went through yet more rebranding (the latest one is ‘Fusion’). As of late, there are four key business lines – Fusionbanking, Fusioncapital, Fusionin- vest and Fusionrisk – that hold multiple products that have been accumulated by the merged companies over the years. Whilst the vendor has an extensive
customer base – over 1800 entities world- wide – new business has proved quite hard to gain. Meanwhile, Misys’ many
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rivals keep chipping away at its user base. Among recent ‘deserters’ in Europe are DNB Luxembourg (see p42), which is replacing the Midas core system with Temenos’ T24, and Denmark-based Spar Nord Bank, which is moving off the Trade Innovation trade finance system onto MIT’s Credoc (see p43). In Asia, Postal- bank in the Philippines is ousting Equa- tion in favour of Idealinvent’s Connect- Core offering (see p16). And in Africa, Uganda-based Crane Bank is rolling out T24 to replace the legacy Bankmaster core, while Central Bank of Lesotho is in search of a new system to replace Midas, which it has been using for 25 years.
legal entity, with its management, struc- ture and workforce intact, states Brad- ford. ‘Crealogix and MBA are lean man- agement companies, so no changes are anticipated,’ he adds. With this acquisition, Crealogix gains
a customer base of 30 entities in the UK and continental Europe, ranging from large players such as Lloyds, Halifax and Credit Suisse, to smaller entities such as Mediterranean Bank in Malta. There will be no disruption or change for the exist- ing customers, Bradford says, ‘and it is business as usual’, but he feels that there are good cross-selling opportunities. ‘Our customers have already expressed a lot of interest in Crealogix and its products,’ he claims.
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