European cash machine vendor Wincor Nixdorf is teaming with German savings banks Hamburger Sparkasse (Haspa) and Sparkasse Bremen to form a joint venture that will provide IT services to financial institutions. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Under the deal the two savings bank will merge their IT units to form the new Hamburg-based company, which will be called Wincor Nixdorf Portavis.
Around 90 IT staff from Haspa will transfer to the new business, along with 30 from Sparkasse Bremen and 10 from Wincor Nixdorf.
Wincor Nixdorf will own 51% of the business, with Haspa's parent company Haspa Finanzholding owning 38% stake in the firm and Sparkasse Bremen holding an 11% share.
As well as managing Haspa and Sparkasse Bremen's IT services, the new unit will provide outsourced IT services - including management of servers, self-service systems, network and telecomms and workstations - to other savings banks in Garmeny.
The unit is scheduled to commence business on 1 October 2005.
The vendor says the new venture is another step in its strategy to move from a system supplier to a provider of managed services, which are expected to represent half of its entire business in the medium term.
Wincor stock rose 2.22%, or EUR1.67, to EUR76.82 on news of the IT venture.