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SunGard Confirms Discussions on Sale SunTrust Will Use CSC Archive System ABN Unit Offers Remote Capture La. Bank Focuses on Receiving Images
SunGard Confirms Discussions on Sale
SunGard Data Systems Inc., a provider of financial services software and transaction processing services, confirmed Monday that it is in talks to sell itself.
The Wayne, Pa., company said it had hired Credit Suisse First Boston to advise on the sale and Sherman & Sterling LLP as its legal adviser.
The announcement followed a published report that a consortium of private equity companies led by Silver Lake Partners, Texas Pacific Group, and Thomas H. Lee Partners LP was considering buying the company for as much as $10 billion.
SunGard, founded in 1983 as a spinoff of a division of Sun Oil Co., has two main units, financial processing and disaster recovery.
In October it announced its intention to spin off the disaster recovery unit, SunGard Availability Services, which provides more than 40% of its revenue, and said the sale would take place by the end of this month. Monday's press release said the company still intends to follow that plan, though SunGard did not say whether the spinoff was on schedule.
That would leave the financial processing business on the block. It focuses on systems for brokerage and trading, wealth management, treasury and risk management, investment management, and benefit, insurance, and investor accounting.
Its technology handles about 70% of all trades on the Nasdaq Stock Market. SunGard says the business has 15,000 customers around the world, including the world's 50 largest financial services companies.
A small SunGard unit provides security and technology services to schools and governments.
SunGard spokesman Michael Ruane and Silver Lake Partners spokesman Matthew Benson did not return calls seeking comment. Texas Pacific spokesman Owen Blicksilver declined to comment, as did Thomas H. Lee spokeswoman Jenna Focarino.
SunGard's press release said the company "does not intend to comment on any specific discussions or any potential transaction unless and until it enters into a definitive agreement with respect to a transaction." It said there can be "no assurance that these discussions will result in any transaction for a purchase of the company."
SunGard shares surged on the news, rising almost $6, or about 24%, by midday, though one investment banking firm, Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, downgraded it, to "Hold," from "Buy."
SunTrust Will Use CSC Archive System
SunTrust Banks Inc. of Atlanta has licensed a check image archiving system from Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calif.
Computer Sciences said Monday that SunTrust would use its CheckVision software in order to deliver electronic images of checks and other documents to its corporate customers on CD-ROM. The technology company will also help combine SunTrust's other CD-ROM image systems into a single product based on CheckVision.
"We had four delivery platforms from several different vendors," including Computer Sciences, said Ernie Harris, a SunTrust group vice president for business and commercial product management, in Computer Sciences' press release.
CheckVision creates an archive of check images, statements, and account reconciliation reports that is available through the Internet for 45 days and stored permanently on CD-ROMs that are delivered to customers.
ABN Unit Offers Remote Capture
Standard Federal Bank of Troy, Mich., has started offering a remote capture deposit service to its corporate customers.
The ABN Amro Holding NV unit announced Friday that it had already started offering check scanners to customers that use its treasury management services.
"Remote Deposit eliminates certain geographic barriers, giving Standard Federal the opportunity to deepen existing relationships throughout various U.S. markets and grow deposit account customers from outside its home market," said Cindy Murray, an executive vice president with the treasury management group, in a press release.
Standard Federal is using scanners and software from NetDeposit Inc. of Salt Lake City, the banking technology subsidiary of Zions Bancorp.
Corporate customers can use remote capture deposit services to convert paper checks into digital images and transmit them to a bank for deposit. Such services also help banks serve companies far from any of their branches because it eliminates the need for customers to actually visit a bank.
La. Bank Focuses on Receiving Images
Most banks getting into image-based check clearing start with technology to transmit images, but Concordia Bank and Trust Co. of Vidalia, La., is more interested in receiving them.
The $375 million-asset bank is installing ImageCentre check imaging software from Fidelity National Financial Inc.
John Mark Williams, Concordia's chief operations officer and cashier, said it plans to begin using the new system during the second week of April to replace the outmoded imaging system it now uses, from Bisys Group Inc. of New York.
Mr. Williams said Thursday that Concordia is eager to use the new software to receive check images from the Federal Reserve to settle check payments by its customers. (Fidelity announced Concordia as a customer last Wednesday.)
"The first thing we're going to be doing will be the incoming Fed cash letter," which contains the daily stack of checks to be paid, he said.
Concordia, in eastern Louis-iana, is more than 350 miles from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, from which it receives checks to be paid.
"Our cash letter is the last one dropped off" by the Fed courier, Mr. Williams said, and it typically arrives after 1 p.m. "We would rather have it first thing in the morning" to post transactions to customer accounts earlier. "The only way we can receive it that early is to receive it electronically."
Fidelity National got ImageCentre last April by buying BankWare Inc.
Concordia is also converting its in-house core processing to Fidelity's Horizon Banking System and hopes to be done by June 30. The current system, from Jack Henry & Associates Inc., is 10 years old and "didn't have the flexibility that we needed with all the new things that were coming out," such as real-time updates and check imaging, Mr. Williams said.
Concordia is also dropping its Jack Henry online banking system in favor of one from Fidelity. Mr. Williams said he wanted his online package to be compatible with the transaction processing system.
The bank plans to add online cash management, which it has never offered, for its corporate clients. "In our rural area, there hasn't been a really big demand for it," he said. "But there have been a couple of cases here lately where it would have helped us."
