Fidelity Info picks up Second Foundation

MUMBAI: Fidelity Information Systems, a provider of core processing solutions for financial institutions, has acquired Second Foundation, an IT services company headquartered in Carlifornia, for close to $20 million.

The buyout is in line with Fidelity’s expansion plan in its offshore presence in India. Second Foundation is a provider of offshore global information technology services. With this FIS’ wholly owned subsidiary, Fidelity Business Solutions now gets a foothold in Bangalore and Chandigarh, where Second Foundation has significant presence.

Avendus was the exclusive advisor to Second Foundation. The company has extensive experience in a multitude of areas, including outsourced product development, quality assurance and business intelligence services as well as implementation services of third-party software applications. The Second Foundation team will continue to support it’s existing clients and augment current global delivery capabilities.

Prior to the acquisition, FIS operated in India, through its Indian partner Covansys Corporation, an IT services company. FIS, however, will continue its relationship with Covansys Corporation, which will be primarily dedicated to internal software application management. Also, since the operations of Covansys was essentially BPO oriented, FIS wanted to look at an IT services company that has expertise in other areas as well.

Currently, FIS has processing and technology relationships with 35 of the top 50 global banks, including nine of the top 10. Approximately 50% of all US residential mortgages are processed using the FIS software.

Second Foundation, which was incepted in 1997 has reached significant scale, and is looking and getting on to the global platform, leveraging on FIS’ international presence. The company specialises in business intelligence, software security, and web services solutions.

Last year, the company embarked on a major expansion in Europe and established development centres and sales offices in Prague, and Liverpool. The company has projects underway in major corporations in the UK, Czech Republic, France and Norway.

sonali.krishna@timesgroup.com