California's Fidelity National Financial (FNF) is to acquire banking systems and services vendor Sanchez Computer Associates.
Under the terms of the agreement, Sanchez will become a subsidiary of FNF's financial technology subsidiary, Fidelity Information Services.
Total consideration for each share of Sanchez common stock will be $6.50, composed of $3.25 in cash and $3.25 in FNF stock.
William Foley, chairman and CEO, FNF, says: "Sanchez's management team and technology assets will play key roles in our ongoing focus on modernising core banking technologies while mitigating the risk our customers face with the underlying business transformation."
Pennsylvania-based Sanchez's primary product offering is Profile, a real time, multi-currency, core banking deposit and loan processing system that can be used on both an outsourced and in-house basis. The vendor also provides wealth management products as well as data centre and business process outsourcing services.
Commenting on the acquisition, Frank Sanchez, CEO, Sanchez, says "We believe that the combination of business knowledge, technical skills, operational experience, financial strength and top-tier customer base is unparalleled by any technology provider in the industry and will produce a compelling value proposition for banks and other financial services institutions that plan to transform to an online real-time infrastructure."
The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2004.