Private equity group Vista has sealed a C$4.8 billion deal to acquire Canadian financial software house DH Corp and merge it with fellow portfolio company Misys.
DH Corp, which acquired payments outfit Fundtech in 2015, currently claims 8000 clients in 70 countries generating $1.5 billion+ in annual revenues. The firm has been on the block for a year, attracting interest from numerous VCs and established fintech players like Fiserv and Temenos.
The transaction price represents a premium of approximately 36% over D+H's closing share price on 5 December, when reports first surfaced that the company was in the market.
Vista says it will merge DH with Misys to create a business with a global footprint and one of the broadest set of financial software available to the market with approximately $2.96 billion (approximately US$2.2 billion ) in revenues, approximately 10,000 employees, and 9,000+ customers across 130 countries, including 48 of the top 50 Banks.
The combination makes a lot of strategic sense for Vista, which has seen its plans to float Misys on the stock exchange fall apart as the company's valuation crashed in the face of Brexit scares and volatile trading conditions. A merger with DH will create a larger, more diversified group that could get the IPO process back on track with a much larger valuation.