Wealth- and portfolio-technology companies combine marketing, R&D efforts. Odyssey Asset Management Systems and NorthStar Systems have teamed up to create a global wealth-management platform that they say will cut across private client and investment management.

"This alliance creates a market-leading offering that will allow our joint clients to leverage the best of breed solutions from the two premier wealth-management providers. [which] together [are] capable of supporting large-scale global deployments," says Robert Zangrillo, NorthStar's chairman and CEO.

Umbrella

The deal puts NorthStar's sales and proposals, planning, wealth-management product catalogs and research offering together with Odyssey's "Component Suite" for portfolio and relationship management under a single marketing umbrella. The two companies say they will also work together to enhance and develop mutually compatible technologies.

"Our alliance with NorthStar allows Odyssey to better serve our clients by providing the leading wealth management solution for asset gathering and asset servicing," says Odyssey chairman Antoine Duchateau.

San Francisco-based NorthStar, which changed its name from Oxygen Software early in 2004, is funded by venture capital firms Benchmark Capital, H.I.G. Capital, Chess Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank as well as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch .

About nine months ago NorthStar did a deal with NaviPlan maker Emerging Information Systems Inc. to help advisors create investment-policy statements.

Lausanne, Switzerland-based Odyssey is an 11-year-old investment-, individual portfolio- and client relationship-management software maker with offices in Europe, the Asian-Pacific region and the U.S. --FWR

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