The Finextra50 Financial Technology Index closed 7% higher last week to 64.13, as separate acquisition news from Fundtech and Metavante saw their share prices increase substantially, with these firms leading the gainers in a generally positive week for markets worldwide.
Gainers
Payments software vendor Fundtech led the gainers on the Finextra 50 index last week, rising 28.69% to $9.42 by Friday close after announcing it had acquired UK-based Bacs payments processing specialist InterSoftware in a £2.7 million cash deal.
Headquartered in Manchester, InterSoftware had revenues of £1.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2008.
Fundtech says the acquisition, through its UK unit Accountis Europe, significantly expands its corporate payments customer base in the country to 8500 - over a third of all companies processing Bacs.
In the US, Metavante also rose on acquisition news, finishing Friday up 18.09% to $23.43 after Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) announced it had agreed an all stock deal worth around $2.94 billion to buy the company, creating the world's largest provider of integrated payment and financial processing services.
Other companies to see significant increases included:
Losers
The Innovation Group led the fallers last week upon news that talks about a possible offer with private-equity firm Carlyle Group had been terminated and that it had ceased to be in an offer period. A week earlier, news of a possible Carlyle bid saw the share price jump by 75%. But after announcing the end of the offer period on Wednesday last week, shares in teh insurance industry IT specialist fell by 37.26% to close Friday at 4.95p
Other index constituents to see signficant falls were:
Index comparison
Methodology
More information on the Finextra50 Financial Technology Index methodology and constituent stocks can be found here.