After six acquisitions last year, five of them in the financial services field, Sungard Data Systems Inc is at it once again. This time it has reached an agreement to acquire London-based Rolfe & Nolan Plc. Sungard will acquire all of the ordinary shares of Rolf & Nolan in exchange for common stock of SunGard, at a rate of between 0.2750 and 0.3100 per share. Wednesday’s closing price would value the transaction at $115m. Fourteen year-old Rolfe & Nolan supplies risk management software for global treasury and capital markets operations and settlement software for the worldwide deriviatives market. It’s core business is the supply and support of setltement systems for institutions that trade futures and options, and it is currently developing a risk management product called Lighthouse. That effort has taken its toll in terms of ongoing development costs, and, says Rolfe & Nolan Group chairman Tim Hearley, longer than anticipated timeframe for winning new sales of the Lighthouse product. The company will fit within Sungard’s Trading Systems Group. Sungard recently began to show its first signs of indigestion, and consolidated three of its previous acquisitions Infinity Financial Technology, Renaissance Software Inc and SunGard Capital Markets, which will operate under the name Infinity and concentrate on financial trading, risk management and operations. Sungard acquired Infinity for $313m last October (CI No 3,271). Meanwhile, Wayne, Pennslyvania-based SunGard is not forgetting its roots in disaster recovery altogether. It has agreed to acquire Raymond Professional Management Inc, a consulting firm based in Roswell, Georgia specialising in business continuity. No financial details were given. Only around 30% of Sungard’s business is now involved in disaster recovery services.
