The Public Interest

For the better part of three months, my colleague Rebecca Natale and I—with 90% of the hard work being done by Reb—spoke with current and former Fidessa staffers, as well as Fidessa clients and various other industry experts, to better under understand what is happening with Fidessa’s suite of solutions in the year following the Ion acquisition. In August, Reb broke the news about mass resignations at Fidessa. The two main questions, though, were why were so many people leaving, and what would that mean for users of Fidessa’s order and execution management platforms, its connectivity services, and its data and analytics tools?

With any acquisition, it is to be expected that the acquiring firm will look to reduce headcount of the acquired firm—there are likely to be overlaps and synergies. And, quite frankly, an acquisition allows for a fresh start and the ability to remove underperformers. Some of that clearly happened with Fidessa. But this mass exodus extends beyond “the usual” efficiency gains, or whatever business parlance you might like to use. Not only did multiple users of Fidessa talk to us about their concerns and the issues they’re already facing, but Fidessa’s employee representatives clearly stated that problems were arising with clients and further layoffs and departures would exacerbate the problem.

We chased this story hard because those still working at Fidessa would want to know what is going on inside their own company. We also believe that users of Fidessa’s various platforms and tools would want to know, as would banks and asset managers who might look to deploy a Fidessa product in the future. Furthermore, the sell-side and buy-side order and execution management spaces—in addition to the analytics and connectivity fields—are becoming increasingly competitive, all while there is a tremendous amount of cost pressure and consolidation.

While this article shows that there have been issues since last year’s acquisition, this could just be a blip before Ion sets the course it intended when it bought Fidessa. And it should be said that Ion contends that service is already improving for the majority of users, as issues relating to platform stability are down 27%, while those relating to software quality are down 18%, according to the vendor.

As the editor of WatersTechnology, I believe it’s imperative that we not only report on acquisitions when they happen, but also keep an eye on them after the ink has dried. At the end of October, Confluence Technologies bought StatPro and we wrote extensively about what that could mean. It will also be important to see what it does mean once StatPro’s collection of tools have been integrated (or potentially spun out) into Confluence. And we will also want to check back in with Fidessa and Ion, as one year from now things could be quite different—just look at what a year has meant for Fidessa.

Anthony Malakian
Editor-in-Chief
(646) 490-3973
anthony.malakian@inforpro-digital.com