Fidessa delays Temenos takeover vote as rival suitors ready offers
CITY software firm Fidessa has pushed its vote on a £1.4bn takeover by Swiss group Temenos to the last possible moment while it considers potentially better offers from rivals.
Financial technology companies SS&C Technologies and Ion Investment now have two weeks to firm up their separate bids or walk away after Fidessa said yesterday it would be voting on the Temenos move on April 27, which was the deadline it had to make a decision by.
A bidding war for the company, which is based in London and provides trading and infrastructure software to financial institutions, started earlier this week when it emerged that the pair were hoping to gatecrash the deal. Their last-minute interest meant that the vote regarding the Temenos deal, which was originally due to take place on Thursday, was put on the back burner.
Shares in the firm rocketed on Tuesday when the new approaches emerged, but were flat yesterday.
Both firms are eyeing up bids higher than the amount Temenos put forward, Fidessa said earlier this week, with Ion Investment offering 5pc more at £38.297 per share in cash. Ion Investment’s interest in Fidessa comes months after it bought a controlling stake in data provider Dealogic from private equity giant Carlyle Group and British media group Euromoney Institutional Investor.
Us-based SS&C confirmed the talks yesterday but said that no terms of any offer had been discussed with the company. The takeover battle comes amid a wave of UK M&A, as well as a slew of deals in the trading and technology space.
US exchange giant CME Group unveiled a £3.9bn takeover of Michael Spencer’s London bond trading firm Nex Group last week.
Meanwhile, private equity giant Blackstone made a $17bn (£12bn) move for Thomson Reuters’ financial data business earlier this year. Fidessa, which made £50m in profits last year and saw revenues rise 7pc to £353.9m, is based in the City but currently generates most of its money from outside Europe.
Chris Aspinwall, the Fidessa chief executive, said earlier this year that the business had already noticed a boost in demand as a result of the changes linked to a sweeping piece of EU legislation called Mifid II.