Silver Lake led group said making $2.2b on SunGard

WASHINGTON: Ten years after banding together to buy SunGard Data Systems Inc. for about $11 billion, an investor group led by Silver Lake Management will reap a $2.2 billion gain selling the company to Fidelity National Information Services Inc., a person with knowledge of the matter said.

Silver Lake and six other private equity firms will post more than a 60 percent profit on the $3.6 billion in equity they and SunGard's management invested, according to the person. The gain includes a $724 million dividend SunGard paid in 2012. Fidelity National said Wednesday it will buy the software maker for $9.1 billion including debt.

The 2005 deal helped spark a surge of debt-fueled buyouts, leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, when deal values soared to tens of billions of dollars. At the time, it was the largest leveraged buyout since KKR & Co.'s $31.3 billion acquisition of RJR Nabisco in 1989.

The Silver Lake-led group, which included Bain Capital, Blackstone Group LP, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s private equity unit, KKR, Providence Equity Partners and TPG Capital, and their clients invested more than $3.4 billion, according to a company filing. SunGard's management kicked in $164 million, and the software maker took on $7.4 billion of debt. SunGard has since sold asset sales and cut long-term debt to about $4.7 billion. Equity holders will receive about $5.1 billion in cash and stock, including $2.8 billion in Fidelity National shares, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Gemma Hart, a spokeswoman for Silver Lake at Brunswick Group, declined to comment on the transaction.