FIS purchase of Sungard – is big always beautiful?

FIS has made its biggest acquisition to date, splashing out $9.1 billion on fellow US vendor Sungard. But with both companies already having large, complex structures and numerous product portfolios (due to their earlier M&A activities), is there a danger of creating a convoluted, near impassable maze?

'FIS's purchase of Sungard provides FIS with additional capability in the areas of treasury, asset management and wealth but it will not be easy to integrate such a large organisation,' observes Clive Bowles, principal consultant at UK-based Fairmort.

'My view of Sungard has always been that is was so big it was hard for anyone to understand all the products and services it had to offer and this included its own sales people!

'To make this new organisation work there will need to be some product rationalisation and inevitably some unhappy customers,' he predicts. IBS ponders where does this leave small, somewhat isolated customers such as, for instance, Crown Agents in the UK, the only Western European user of Sungard's Ambit Core Banking system.

As for FIS, Sungard will provide its new owner 'with a wider armoury of systems to compete in the emerging Software-as-a-Service market in some of the key international financial centres, plus many potential cross selling opportunities', Bowles says.

What do you think? Calling for views from the industry participants, on all sides.