Fidelity National Information Services pays $9.1bn to gain access to Sungard's clients
Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) announced that it will acquire rival SunGard Data Systems Inc for $9.1bn. The deal will give the firm access to Sungard's thousands of trading and money management clients. After the deal completes, FIS will become the largest financial services technology company in the world, with 90% of the worlds 50 largest banks as clients.
Meet the new King of the Fintech Hill: FIS.

Today, FIS effectively became the largest financial services technology company in the world by revenue, as it agreed to acquire SunGard for $9.1 billion.

Just consider these stats for the new FIS:

$9.2 billion of pro forma revenue (FY 2014);

90% of the world’s 50 largest banks are clients;

55,000 employees in more than 100 countries; and

14,000 SunGard customers now join FIS’s client list.

In comparison, that $9.2 billion will tower over Fiserv’s annual revenue, which is in the range of $6.4 billion.

The official line is that SunGard is “complementary” to FIS (because SunGard is more focused on the Wall Street side of financial services technology) and that the deal represents a “milestone” for FIS (clearly).

But, more importantly, this is about $200 million of “annualized cost synergies” that FIS will extract from SunGard by 2017. Here’s where FIS will cut costs:

Corporate / Admin, which includes Finance, HR, Legal, etc.: -$65 million

IT & Facilities: -$55 million

Sales & Marketing: -$30 million

Org. Restructure: -$50 million

FIS said some of those cost savings will be realized in as little as six months. That’s good for FIS, which is effectively an acquisition machine. Not surprisingly, FIS stock [ticker: FIS] is trading nearly 6% higher at 10:33 am ET today.

More importantly however, we ask, Is this is good for financial services innovation?

The sentiments online are that this is a sign that fintech M&A is hitting the big time. The deal also implies that “the big boys are waking up” and will take a more assertive role in capturing financial technology budgets — to the detriment of fintech startup “unicorn land.”

“The bear has been poked,” Geezeo’s Bryan Clagett wrote on Twitter.

If we had to rate FIS, which traces is roots back to Systematics launched in 1968, on the innovation scale, we would give it a B- for some positives on the payments side (mobile cardless ATM cash withdrawals, for example), but little engagement with the fintech startup ecosystem. We’ve had to deal with FIS bureaucracy on a small scale, and just from a media standpoint, there is certainly red tape floating around FIS’s many offices (Jacksonville, Fla., being its headquarters). Those 55,000 employees will just breed more sluggishness, despite the fact that financial services needs innovation leadership from the major technology providers as much as it does from the streets of San Francisco.