SunGard was an American

multinational company A multinational company (MNC), also referred to as a multinational enterprise (MNE), a transnational enterprise (TNE), a transnational corporation (TNC), an international corporation or a stateless corporation with subtle but contrasting senses, i ...

based in

Wayne, Pennsylvania Wayne is an unincorporated community centered in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on the Main Line, a series of highly affluent Philadelphia suburbs located along the railroad tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad and one of the wealthiest areas ...

, which provided software and services to education, financial services, and public sector organizations. It was formed in 1983, as a spin-off of the computer services division of Sun Oil Company. The name of the company originally was an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

which stood for Sun Guaranteed Access to Recovered Data, a reference to the disaster recovery business it helped pioneer. SunGard was ranked at 480th in the

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Fortune 500 list in the year 2012. In August 2005, the company was acquired by seven private equity firms for $11.3 billion and de-listed from the NYSE. SunGard was one of the title sponsors of the pro cycling team until the end of 2011. In August 2015,

FIS FIS or fis may refer to: Science and technology * '' Fis'', an ''E. Coli'' gene * Fis phenomenon, a phenomenon in linguistics * F♯ (musical note) * Flight information service, an air traffic control service * Frame Information Structure, a Se ...

announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire SunGard.

Business

SunGard provided software and processing for financial services, K-12 and

Higher Education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after comple ...

, and the public sector. It also provided continuity-assurance and production data center hosting services, now part of SunGard AS. SunGard had offices in many parts of the world outside of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

including

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

Tunis ''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 ...

, Stockholm, and the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

Acquisitions

SunGard historically grew by acquisition. Past mergers included Performance Pathways, Vericenter, InFlow, Strohl Systems, Comdisco Continuity Services, and Guardian iT PLC on the availability side, Systems & Computer Technology Corp. (SCT) on the higher education side, and Kiodex. Inc.,

GL Trade GL Trade was a French provider of financial order management and trading systems that covered front office, middle office and back office used by international financial institutions. Its main products were real-time market data and trading syste ...

, Oshap (Mint, Decalog), TRAX, Carnot AG, Front Capital Systems (Front Arena), Martini, Monis
APT
Dyatron, Reech, VPM, Phase 3 Systems, Infinity, Microhedge, Reconciliation, Automated Securities Clearance India, Opus Renaissance Software Inc., and National Computer Systems Financial Systems Division on the (primarily financial) software and processing side. SunGard completed more than 150 acquisitions over 20 years. Among the largest acquisitions were: * In 1997, SunGard Data Systems acquired Infinity Financial Technology, a designer of trading and risk-management software, for about US$390 million, where $313 million were paid in stock and $77 million went in cash. Infinity Financial Technology reported revenues of about $60 million in the fiscal year 1996. * In 1999, SunGard acquired Israel's Oshap Technologies (Nasdaq:OSHSF) for $210M in stock, giving SunGard a foothold in both the

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement c ...

(via Oshap's subsidiary Mint Communications) and front-office portfolio management systems markets (via Oshap's subsidiary Decalog). * In 2001, SunGard acquired Comdisco Inc.’s computer disaster-recovery business after a U.S. appeals court rebuffed a request by the Justice Department to halt the $825 million transaction. * In 2004, SunGard acquired Systems & Computer Technology Corp. (SCT) for $590 million in cash. * In 2008, SunGard acquired

, a Paris-based financial services firm for nearly US$1 billion; in a first tranche a 65% stake in GL Trade was acquired for $625 million, including effect of outstanding stock options. The deal encompasses the

NYSE Euronext NYSE Euronext, Inc. was a transatlantic multinational financial services corporation that operated multiple securities exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext and NYSE Arca (formerly known as ArcaEx). NYSE merged with Archi ...

's 40% stake in GL Trade, however 25.4% were in the hand of the founders and 36.6% of the shares were free float. The deal was considered to be financially hazardous, given that GL Trade reported revenues of €203 million and an EBITDA of €26 million (fiscal year 2007). * In 2008, SunGard acquired Strohl Systems, an IT company, a direct competitor of SunGard in availability and recovery planning, for an estimated $450 Million cash transaction. Strohl Systems became the software division of

SunGard Availability Services Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) is a provider of IT production and recovery services with annual revenues of approximately $773 million and offices in 12 countries. The company uses its experience in recovery to design, build and run ...

, located in King of Prussia, PA *In 2010, Sungard acquired 365 Hosting Limited cloud computing and data centre services company

Leveraged buyout 2005

Formerly listed on the

NYSE The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its liste ...

(

ticker symbol A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. In short, ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols or characters (generally Latin letters ...

SDS) on August 11, 2005, the company was acquired by a consortium of seven

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a t ...

investment firms in a transaction valued at $11.3 billion. The partners in the acquisition were Silver Lake Partners,

Bain Capital Bain Capital is an American private investment firm based in Boston. It specializes in private equity, venture capital, credit, public equity, impact investing, life sciences, and real estate. Bain Capital invests across a range of industry se ...

Blackstone Group Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real estate bu ...

Goldman Sachs Capital Partners Goldman Sachs Capital Partners is the private equity arm of Goldman Sachs, focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments globally. The group, which is based in New York City, was founded in 1986. As of 2019, GS Capital Partners had ...

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts KKR & Co. Inc., also known as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., is an American global investment company that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit, and, through its strate ...

, Providence Equity Partners, and

TPG Capital TPG Inc., previously known as Texas Pacific Group and TPG Capital, is an American investment company based in Fort Worth, Texas. The private equity firm is focused on leveraged buyouts and growth capital. TPG manages investment funds in growth c ...

De-merger activities

* In December 2010, The Capita Group plc acquired SunGard Public Sector Holdings Ltd (part of the business servicing the UK public sector) for £86 million. The new business was known as Capita Secure Information Systems; it has now been renamed Capita Secure Managed Services. * In August 2011 Datatel and SunGard's Higher Education group announced a definitive agreement to combine businesses and operate as one company, with Datatel’s current chief executive officer, John Speer, the chief executive officer. Affiliates of private equity firm

Hellman & Friedman Hellman & Friedman LLC (H&F) is an American private equity firm, founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman and Tully Friedman, that makes investments primarily through leveraged buyouts as well as growth capital investments. H&F has focused its efforts ...

LLC acquired the SunGard Higher Education businesses from SunGard Data Systems Inc. for an aggregate cash purchase price of US$1.775 billion and combined the acquired businesses. The combined company was to operate under a new name, Ellucian, as announced at the 2012 annual users' conference. * On 7 December 2011

, Datatel and SunGard announced that the proposed combination had cleared Department of Justice review. In March 2012, the finalization of the combination into Ellucian was announced. SunGard's total debt of US$8.08 billion was alleviated by selling this business line; nonetheless, a projected annual revenue shortage of $580 million can be assumed, resulting in a total revenue projection for the fiscal 2011 of $4.7 billion, suggesting a negative revenue trend. * In March 2014 SunGard completed the split-off of its Availability Services business, forming the independent company Sungard AS. Andy Stern continued to lead the Sungard AS business. *In 2015, SunGard was acquired by the

company. * In February 2017,

Vista Equity Partners Vista Equity Partners is an American investment firm focused on financing and forwarding software, data, and technology-enabled startup businesses. Vista has invested in hundreds of companies, including Misys, Ping Identity, and Marketo. The ...

acquired SunGard's Public Sector and Education businesses from FIS, and renamed and rebranded SunGard Public Sector as Superion by April 2017, while adding SunGard Education to its own PowerSchool holdings.

References

{{authority control, state=expanded Financial services companies of the United States Financial software companies Software companies based in Pennsylvania Companies based in Delaware County, Pennsylvania American companies established in 1983 Financial services companies established in 1983 Financial technology companies FIS (company) Software companies established in 1983 2005 mergers and acquisitions 2015 mergers and acquisitions Corporate spin-offs Software companies of the United States