SunGard's long-standing chief executive officer Cristobal Conde is to step down from the post later this month, ending a 25-year association with the US technology house.
Russell Fradin, chairman and chief executive of HR and outsourcing consultancy Aon Hewitt, has been lined up to succeed Conde as CEO.
Conde joined SunGard in 1987, following the acquisition of Devon Systems, which he co-founded. Now one of the company's largest individual shareholders, he stepped up to the top job in 2002, taking the firm on an extensive acquisition spree before steering it into private equity hands in 2005.
But with the financial crisis of 2008 hitting its core capital markets business hard, SunGard has struggled to match the sustained double digit growth that propelled it during the go-go years at the start of the millennium.
At the time SunGard was taken private, Conde indicated he would work with its private equity sponsors to eventually hand over leadership to a successor who would take it into the next phase of its growth.
Says Conde: " Taking the company private was the best strategic move in the company's history. The timing for this leadership handover is right and I look forward to working with Russ and the SunGard team on a smooth transition."
Fradin comes to SunGard with a fine grasp of integration strategy and outsourcing business models. He oversaw the successful September 2010 merger between Aon Consulting and Hewitt Associates, having been chief executive officer of Hewitt since 2006. Previously, he served as chief executive officer of financial services outsourcing group Bisys, and also held various executive positions at Automatic Data Processing.