Finastra
Finastra is a financial technology company based in London. The firm was formed in late 2017 through the combination of D+H and Misys, after Vista Equity Partners acquired Misys in June 2012 and subsequently purchased D+H in 2017.
Finastra is led by chief executive officer, Simon Paris was appointed in June 2018. The company has offices in 42 countries with U.S. $2.1 billion in revenues. The company employs over 10,000 people and has over 9,000 customers across 130 countries.
Misys history
1970 to 2000
The company was founded by Roger Morgan and Kevin Lomax as Misys to develop insurance software.The purchase of multiple companies in respective markets by Misys under the leadership of Kevin Lomax allowed Misys to become a software supplier to the US healthcare industry, to banks and to fund managers worldwide. Many of the companies acquired and consolidated by Misys were themselves products of previous mergers.
In 1987 Misys shares were first traded on the Unlisted Securities Market. It was admitted to the Main List of the London Stock Exchange in 1989, cross selling to increased client base and economies of scale arising from consolidation.
In 1994 Misys entered the banking software space by purchasing Kapiti Ltd. In 1995 Misys purchased ACT, thus giving Misys control of 3 of the 4 largest selling core banking packages at the time. At time of purchase, Midas had the biggest installed base of any "off-the shelf" banking software package.
The largest banking software company to be brought into the Misys fold was BIS. Business Intelligence Services or BIS Ltd in 1976 had acquired Kingsley-Smith and Associates and a software package named MIDAS developed by KSA. This banking software system was based on a concept of a core multi-currency accounting module. At the time, most other International Banks worldwide worked and accounted on a 'single currency' methodology. It was marketed to and operated by a number of client London Banks from 1979. From the mid to late-1980s competition to MIDAS came from vendors with systems called Kapiti, BankMaster and IBIS. In 1991 ACT purchased Kindle followed by BIS in 1993 uniting two of the biggest selling products under one ownership albeit with different user bases. Midas was focused on its international branch banking in the world's financial centers. The simplicity of Bankmaster and its Branchpower front end appealed to tier 3 and 4 banks in Africa and South America.
Kapiti Ltd was a privately held packaged banking software house focused on using IBM's mid range computers to server the international branch banking market. Kapiti was founded in 1975 by a Mr. John Kennedy, a New Zealand native and competed directly with the commercially more successful Midas system. Initially headquartered in London, the company moved to Windsor then Slough, Berkshire. In 1990 Kapiti re-branded the well established Kapiti International Banking System as EQUATION 1, sales were still focused on international branch banking with clusters of users in financial centers like London, plus some small retail operations in the Gulf. The combination of the port to the new IBM AS/400 platform with its increased processing power, the user friendly EQ2 user interface rework, the performance boost from the EQ3 data base rewrite, and the addition of a client server Cashier system had allowed an expansion into retail banking. Kapiti also pursued wholesale banking by merging with Aregon International, purchasing Future Systems and purchasing rights to some reporting tools. None of the acquired companies prospered under Kapiti. However the technical expertise of the Aregon team was exploited to build in house a trade finance system called Trade Innovation which saw commercial success for approximately 20 years.
In 1996 Misys bought Summit Systems, an American software company selling a front-office cross-asset management system targeting investment banks' trading rooms.
In 1997 it bought Medic Computer Systems, a healthcare software business.
2000 to present
In June 2001 Misys bought DBS Management, a supplier of software to Independent Financial Advisors.In June 2001 Misys bought Sunquest Information Systems, a United States based supplier of medical systems software.
In January 2004 Misys bought IQ Financial Systems from Deutsche Bank.
In July 2005 Misys bought Almonde.
In February 2006 Misys bought Intesio.
In March 2006 Misys bought NEOMAlogic.
In October 2006 the CEO Kevin Lomax, one of the company's founders, resigned and IBM veteran Mike Lawrie was appointed as his replacement
In July 2007 Misys sold its diagnostic information software division to Vista Equity Partners.
In October 2008 Misys' subsidiary, Misys Healthcare, was merged with Allscripts, a medical records business, to become Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc
In November 2010 Misys bought Sophis, a provider of portfolio and risk management software.
In February 2012, Misys entered into merger talks with its Swiss rival Temenos. The deal later collapsed when the two sides were unable to agree to terms.
In March 2012 private equity firm Vista Equity Partners announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Misys.
In June 2012, upon the completion of acquisition by Vista Equity Partners, Misys was merged with Turaz, another acquisition of Vista. Turaz was formerly the treasury and risk management software division of Thomson Reuters.
In February 2014, Misys bought Hungary-based IND Group, a supplier of online and mobile banking software.
In August 2014, Misys bought Custom Credit Systems, a US-based supplier of credit workflow and loan origination software.
In March 2017, D+H announced that it would be acquired by Vista Equity Partners and combined with Misys
In June 2017, the merger with D+H was completed, and the company was rebranded as Finastra
In January 2018, Finastra acquired Olfa Soft for its FX e-trading platform for financial institutions.
In April 2018, Finastra launched an innovation lab in Hong Kong to enable collaboration between banks and other fintech companies.
In June 2018, Finastra announced it acquired Malauzai, a provider of mobile and internet banking solutions for community financial institutions.
In June 2018, Finastra, launched cloud-based platform to develop apps to collaborate with banks.
D+H History
In 1875, D+H was founded as Davis & Henderson, a Canadian manufacturer specialising in bookbinding and printing. By the latter part of the 1890s, Canadian financial institutions began to form a significant portion of D+H customer base.In the 1960s, D+H started to produce printed cheques with Magnetic Ink Character Recognition encoding and began printing individually personalized bank cheques. It continued to focus on the cheque business through the 1970s and 1980s.
Following a series of acquisitions starting in 2005, D+H shifted its business to providing financial technology services worldwide.
In 2011, D+H went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It acquired Mortgagebot and ASSET Inc. in 2011, Avista Solutions in 2012, Harland Financial Solutions and Compushare in 2013, and Fundtech in 2015.
In 2016, D+H added blockchain technology capabilities to its global payments platform. The added capabilities enabled banks that use its Global PAYplus services platform to access distributed ledgers to connect networks, move money in real time and improve access to liquidity.
On 17 June 2017, D+H announced that it would be acquired by Vista Equity Partners and combined with Misys, operating under the new company name Finastra for a total enterprise value of approximately $4.8 billion.