Temenos agrees 1.4 bln pounds deal to buy British software house Fidessa
ZURICH, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Swiss banking software company Temenos on Wednesday said it has agreed with the board of Fidessa Group (LSE: FDSA.L - news) to buy the British financial software company for about 1.4 billion pounds ($1.96 billion).
Talks between the two companies were announced on Tuesday, with Temenos wanting to add Fidessa's equities trading technology to expand the range of customers it can reach in the financial services industry.
Fidessa shareholders will receive 35.67 pounds for each share in the all-cash deal, expected to be completed in the first half of 2018. The British company's investors will also get a final dividend and a special dividend of 79.7 pence for 2017.
Temenos said it is borrowing up to 1.43 billion pounds to pay for the acquisition, and would later raise cash on the capital markets to reduce its debt.
The deal "will accelerate both companies complementary growth strategies in banking and capital markets and will enable us to cross-sell into our existing client bases and capture a greater share of the IT and software spend of banks especially as they move to the cloud", said Temenos Chief Executive Andreas Andreades in a statement. ($1 = 0.7152 pounds) (Reporting by John Revill)