Big Blue wants a slice of the Mellon.
IBM's burgeoning outsourcing unit, Information Systems Solution Corp., is eager to offer its services to trust banks, says Lane Jorgensen, ISSC's manager of market support and planning.
Trust outsourcing is a business in which Pittsburgh-based Mellon Bank Corp. has long been the lead player.
"We see major opportunities in the trust area, and we're going to invest accordingly," Mr. Jorgensen said.
The International Business Machines Corp. unit, formed in 1991, runs data centers and helps develops software for 10 bank clients, including Continental Bank, Chicago; First Tennessee Bank, Memphis; and Hibernia National Bank, New Orleans. But it now has its sights on trust, check processing, and other specialty areas.
"There's no way they could do everything we do," says a source in its trust outsourcing group, arguing that IBM lacks the banking contacts to get the business.
He estimated that Mellon provides services to more than 100 of the 600 U.S. financial institutions that use outsiders to run all of part of their trust operations.
