The deal could spawn a wealth-management technology play to rival SunGard's. Bank technology maker Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) has agreed to buy processing-service provider Metavante Technologies. The deal is meant to give FIS a bigger piece of the financial-service IT pie and decrease its reliance on transaction services, which are vulnerable in times when money is tight.

"This transaction will further strengthen FIS's competitive position as a leading global provider of technology solutions and enable us to generate increased value for shareholders and customers," says FIS' president and CEO Lee Kennedy.

Look out SunGard

And so it should. FIS comes into the deal as a transaction-processing, card-issuer-solutions and related outsourcing-service provider to more than 14,000 financial institutions. Milwaukee, Wisc.-based Metavante gives it entrée, as a payment- and investment-accounting tech provider, to 8,000 more.

The union of FIS and Metavante is also likely to have an impact on the wealth-management space by bringing together Metavante's trust-accounting capabilities and FIS' WealthWare front-office platform.

"It would be expected that FIS' WealthWare will be integrated with Metvante's trust back-office systems and together this could form a compelling offering for trust companies -- a space that has since long struggled with upgrading their technology environment," says Alois Pirker, a senior analyst with the Boston-based consultancy Aite Group. "The enterprise-wide wealth-management approach of WealthWare could also provide an ideal application for many trust companies to integrate their brokerage and trust offerings into one wealth-management front-office platform."

If FIS manages to pull that off, it "could become a serious competitor in the area of wealth management to [Wayne, Pa.-based] SunGard," Pirker adds.

Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS is set to pay $2.94 billion for Metavante. When Milwaukee-based financial-service company Marshall & Ilsley spun Metavante off in 2007, it set its value at about $4.25 billion. -FWR

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