Fidelity Positioned Against Future Competitors With Metavante Purchase

Buying its next-largest competitor in core processing will make Fidelity National Information Services Inc. a giant in banking technology and position it against the even larger companies it expects to enter the market, reports CardLine sister publication American Banker. The Jacksonville, Fla.-based processor announced a $2.94 billion stock deal for Milwaukee-based Metavante Technologies Inc. yesterday (CardLine, 4/1). The purchase will make Fidelity the world's largest provider of banking technology products and services, Lee Kennedy, Fidelity's president and CEO said during a conference call yesterday with analysts. Fidelity will need that kind of scale to face the newcomers that are eyeing the payments market, he said. "There are going to be larger competitors in this space in the not-so-distant future," including Oracle Corp. and International Business Machines Corp., Kennedy said. Both Oracle and IBM are already in the financial services technology market, he said. "They dabble in this space, but not in a big way yet." He also mentioned Hewlett-Packard Co., whose chief, Mark Hurd, is the former CEO of Dayton, Ohio-based NCR Corp. "Those companies have the capital and resources to move into a market when they want to," says Frank R. Martire, Metavante's president and CEO.