He meant it as, sungard is now the backer, and their combined balance sheet is much stronger then Andover's by it's own.
Andover Takeover
- Thread starter calibertrader
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He meant it as, sungard is now the backer, and their combined balance sheet is much stronger then Andover's by it's own.
Ok, so did Sungard completely consume Andover?
Or did they make some sort of investment in them and partner with them only.
They bought them outright.
Thanks
No problem.
Quote from Avalanche:
It's an apples and oranges comparison with regard to prop vs retail but, when Instinet bought Protrader in Oct of 01 the first thing they did was start closing down locations.
By the last count on their website Protrader was down to just three "true" locations. Denver, Irvine, and Austin. I'm not saying it was all about the buyout, because the all retail firms have had a lot of attrition but certainly when the deal first closed the first closings came down via a mandate from the top from what I understand and it affected quite a number of their traders.
That begs the question, why did Instinet or Reuters pay so damn much for Protrader? The bubble had already deflated to a large extent. For that kind of money you would certainly think they could have built their own software but who knows?
Maybe Sunguard wanted Andover for the Hammer? They (Sungard) are pretty much a software type firm right? (I know very little about Sunguard).
We traders all figured some of it had to be that they were paying for getting all the daytraders (the clearing bucks) which would would also send more trades through gr8trade which would probably integrate well with INCA (instinets ecn) but then they started rapidly closing up places.
Note: Instinet did integrate some type of proprietary routing into Portal (gr8trade) a few months ago. Note also however that at the time INCA was losing a lot of ecn volume to island, they ofcourse since bought or merged with island.
Anyway, I don't know anything about Andover/Sunguard but just thought I would mention the buyout above because it certainly affected traders with that firm and what they did didn't really make much sense and to me still doesn't make that much sense.
Maybe these trading platforms are a lot more expensive to develop and get people to trade on than I think.
I know that instinet wanted their own platform however to tie into their clearing operation and apparently from that standpoint they got what they wanted as ETG recently switched and they will probably add more clearing with daytrading type firms going foward because of it. Andover ofcourse already has a platform that ties into their clearing.
That begs the question, is Sungard anything like instinets parent reuters? Not at first glance but maybe their are some parallels there.
Just rambling on here folks. As I said I don't know much at all about Sungard so I could be totally of base. Just pontificating (or whatever the word is).
Quite a few years ago, some guys I tutored and consulted for their corporation quit and went to work for Sungard. They provided financial back office computer services to others in the industry, so that those firms didn't have to compete in the Technology Industry (you know, hiring, firing, training, staffing, archiving, programming, maintaining data centers and so forth). At that time, many of their customers were glad to fire their staffs or sell them wholesale to Sungard and then let them be their employee.
PWC recently sold their Technology Consulting Practice(s) to IBM. IBM just landed the JPMorgan $7Billion/4yr tecnology contract. All those consultants, staff, managers, vice presidents and so forth instantly became unemployed, provided that IBM didn't pick them up.
Evidently the trend in the industry will be further consolidation, particularly in the Technology side of the houses, so that the customers can concentrate on their core businesses and not on all the staffing/budgetary requirements of a Technology department. Running a data center, keeping staff, maintaining software, keeping contract services up to date and the never ending "latest and greatest widgets" have been vastly too expensive for most firms, and they will be inclined to this wave of outsourcing.
The Andover Guys are some pretty sharp dudes! I'd rest well knowing that whatever deal they're in, will win!
Cheers and happy trading....
Have you heard any number being thrown around for how much Andover went for or what the terms of the deal were for. I am interested to see how it compared to Cybertraders deal a few years ago.
I've been trying to find out, but it's being kept under lock and key pretty well.
Won't sungard have to disclose that being a public company?