Kyriba, the global leader in cloud treasury and finance solutions, today announced it has reached an agreement to acquire FiREapps, the leader in enterprise currency management, in a deal that creates the most advanced and effective solution for seamlessly managing the entire lifecycle of global foreign exchange (FX) risk.
The agreement will combine two global leaders in cloud treasury and risk management, and further enhance Kyriba’s capabilities for safeguarding its clients against the entire continuum of financial and operational risk, including FX exposures, payments fraud, regulatory risk and more.
“FX volatility is a major strategic challenge for treasury organizations,” said Kevin Permenter, senior research analyst for enterprise applications at IDC, a leading technology analyst firm. “Financial leaders doing business in multiple countries should be looking to adopt a more holistic approach to their global risk management strategies.”
The acquisition will create a highly advanced solution for managing global FX risk, including data gathering and consolidation, reporting, analytics, decision support, payments, hedge accounting and more. The combined result is a faster, more efficient way to manage FX exposures than using old school processes involving spreadsheets and manual data gathering across multiple systems.
In a published case study, treasury executives from a multibillion dollar US consumer goods company shared the results of using Kyriba and FiREapps to better manage their cash, liquidity, payments and currency exposure across 38 ERP systems, 25 different business units and dozens of global banks. The initial result was a dramatic reduction in foreign currency net losses, from $90M (cumulative) in 2013-2015 down to $2M in 2016, and a near doubling of cash visibility to 95 percent.
“The acquisition of FiREapps deepens our commitment to helping senior financial executives be more agile and efficient in managing all types of risk, including FX exposures,” said Jean-Luc Robert, chairman and CEO of Kyriba. “We are excited to welcome FiREapps customers, employees and partners into the Kyriba family.”
The FX market is one of the largest financial markets in the world, and has become increasingly volatile thanks to geo-political events such as Brexit, trade wars and continued pressure from hyper-inflationary economics. According to FiREapps data, global corporations lost at least $39 billion during the first half of 2018, up from $14 billion during the same period the year before. The analysis, from FiREapps’ “Q2 2018 Currency Impact Report,” sampled data from 1,200 publicly held multinational companies worldwide.
“The market has been asking for a single-vendor solution to manage the entire breadth of FX currency exposure,” said Wolfgang Koester, founder and CEO of FiREapps. “By joining with Kyriba, we fill that gap with a highly differentiated solution, while also aligning with world-class capabilities for cash and risk management, payments, working capital optimization and more.”