Misys agrees to $2b takeover bid from Vista

British banking software services company Misys has agreed to a 1.27 billion-pound ($2 billion) takeover bid by Vista Equity Partners, after merger talks with Swiss rival Temenos collapsed last week. Misys said on Monday it was backing a 350 pence-per-share cash offer from Vista, which will combine Misys with Kondor, the trade and risk management software firm which Vista bought last year from Thomson Reuters. However, shares in Misys were up 8.4 per cent at 357 pence by 1300 GMT as some investors bet on a higher offer emerging. Misys’s biggest shareholder, US activist investor ValueAct which holds a 21.5 per cent stake, did not endorse the offer.  Earlier this month ValueAct said it had teamed up with private equity group CVC Capital Partners to consider making a bid of its own for Misys “that provides a certainty of cash upon completion” in preference to the Temenos all-share proposal. ValueAct and CVC said in a statement on Monday that they were still considering whether to make a joint cash bid for Misys and advised shareholders to take no immediate action. Temenos, which could also come back into talks now a rival offer has been made, declined to comment on its intentions. Misys and Temenos are enduring tough trading as their core bank customers, under pressure to cut costs, delay spending on major upgrades to their transactional systems. Misys says it has over 1,200 customers including the world’s 50 biggest banks. Alongside news of the deal, Misys issued a profit warning, saying revenue plunged 12 per cent in its fiscal third quarter, resulting in a 3 per cent drop for the year to date. Analyst Roger Phillips at Merchant Securities said that in the light of the profit warning the Vista deal looked good. “In case any shareholders were thinking about not accepting, the Misys third-quarter (trading update) out today contains a very material profit warning,” he said. “In part this is down to deal-related delays in licence fee signatures but it also suggests Misys would face a rocky future on a standalone basis as trading conditions worsen.” Misys’s acting chief executive Tom Kilroy dampened hopes of a counterbid. “If any other company made an offer we would of course talk to them, but we think it is unlikely this deal will be bettered,” he said.