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Fidelity National Information Services Inc. expects to complete its purchase of Metavante Technologies Inc. by Oct. 1 now that the vendors have cleared the final hurdles to their $2.94 billion deal.
September 4 -
Fidelity National Information Services Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., said Wednesday that it had agreed to acquire Metavante Technologies Inc., making it the industry's largest banking technology vendor by far.
April 1
Fidelity National Information Services Inc. completed its acquisition Thursday, as expected, of its rival Metavante Technologies Inc., and introduced a new brand identity.
The Jacksonville, Fla., vendor, which is now calling itself the world's largest provider of banking and payments technology, adopted a new corporate logo and said it would go to market using its stock symbol, FIS.
"We finally got it done. It was a while coming," said Frank Martire, the Metavante chairman who now becomes Fidelity's president and chief executive, noting a lengthy antitrust review by the Justice Department. "The good news about the delay is that we've had a lot of time to plan how to put these two companies together."
The all-stock deal, announced April 1 and valued at $2.94 billion based on Metavante's stock price then, closed Thursday worth $4.2 billion. Metavante shareholders received 1.35 shares in Fidelity for each Metavante share, and there were 121.4 million shares outstanding in the Milwaukee vendor. Fidelity closed Wednesday at $25.52, up 40% from when the deal was announced as the market recovered from its March lows.
The branding change will give the company a fresh look, said Gary Norcross, who was Fidelity's chief operating officer and the president of its small-bank integrated financial solutions unit and is now a corporate executive vice president and COO.
"We're not changing our name. We're changing our logo," he said. "We're excited about the new brand, what it stands for, the two companies coming together."
Christine Barry, a research director at the research and advisory firm Aite Group LLC, said Fidelity faces significant risks as it merges the two organizations.
"As the company strives to integrate its operations, they also have to continue to invest in new products and services," Barry said. "It becomes harder for them with their customers, because people assume they will be distracted."
