Former VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron and private equity house GTCR have set up a $500 million investment fund to pursue acquisitions in the financial technology space.
GTCR plans to invest up to $450 million of equity capital into the new investment vehicle, Opus Global, with Bergeron committing an additional $50 million.
Bergeron previously led the acquisition of VeriFone from Hewlett-Packard in 2001 and, together with backing from GTCR in 2002, built VeriFone into a leading multinational payments company
Prior to VeriFone, Bergeron was a nine-year veteran of SunGard Data Systems, serving as CEO of SunGard Brokerage Systems and president of SunGard Futures Systems.
"The existing financial technology and payments ecosystems are rapidly evolving, but remain highly fragmented with limited interoperability and little opportunity to leverage enterprise-wide data," says Bergeron. "We see an opportunity to successfully consolidate and globalise best-in-breed products for worldwide deployment while leveraging data across applications. We intend to assemble a leading, global financial technology company, and to develop a worldwide distribution network of partners, distributors and employees."
He says the fund will invest in companies ranging from smaller, entrepreneurial businesses to multibillion-dollar enterprises.
Bergeron will act as CEO of Opus Global, which will be headquartered in Palo Alto, California.