ION becomes Cedacri’s new industrial owner, following the company’s transformation and growth with FSI investment. FSI is expected to reinvest in Cedacri as minority partner of ION, almost doubling the current invested capital
Milano, Collecchio, 5th March 2021
- Cedacri is the leading Italian independent provider of core banking software and services to banks and financial institutions
- With FSI support, a new management team led the transformation and growth of the company, through the addition of new highly reputable customers and the transformational acquisitions of leading fintech businesses Oasi and CAD IT
- ION is a leading global provider of financial software and data processing solutions. The partnership with ION further accelerates Cedacri plan to become the preferred technology provider for financial institutions in Italy and abroad.
FSI announces the signing of a binding agreement with ION for the sale of its 27% stake in Cedacri, along with the other shareholding banks owning the remaining 73%. FSI, through the FSI I fund, invested in Cedacri in December 2017. The partnership with ION, a global fintech group leader in financial software and analytics, has the plan to further develop the company’s potential, levering on ION leading-edge technological capabilities and highly reputable financial customers abroad.
Since the date of its investment – operating in unison with the shareholding banks – FSI was able to facilitate the expansion and strengthening of Cedacri’s management team, leading to the appointment of the CEO, Corrado Sciolla. With such new leadership and a new functional governance, Cedacri accelerated its organic and inorganic growth with some significant milestones. In February 2019, it completed the acquisition from Nexi of OASI, a Regtech leader in anti-money laundering and regulatory reporting software. In November 2019, Cedacri completed the acquisition of CAD IT, a leading software company for the brokerage of financial instruments. During May 2020 and in spite of the challenges created by the pandemic, the company was also able to complete the migration of Deutsche Bank Italy to Cedacri’s core banking platform, one of the largest ever migrations in Italy to an independent core banking platform.
In 2020 the company reached over €400 mln in revenues and over €100 mln EBITDA run-rate; a figure more than doubled since FSI investment. Key to the company’s success was the effective strategic repositioning following the migration of Deutsche Bank Italy and the acquisitions of OASI and CAD IT, which were financed with debt as Cedacri was left unlevered upon FSI entry. The company significantly increased the number of employees to ca. 2,400 people (from 1,500 pre FSI investment) and was also able to achieve significant ESG targets, such as 100% of energy supply from certified renewable sources.
FSI and the other Cedacri shareholders have identified ION as the best industrial partner to further support the company plan to become the preferred technology partner for financial institutions in Italy and abroad. FSI believes that Cedacri has still a significant untapped growth potential and will continue supporting the company, coherently with its long-term partnership approach, and is expected to reinvest as minority partner of ION, almost doubling the current invested capital.
Maurizio Tamagnini, FSI CEO, commented: “We invested in Cedacri, confident of its growth potential and the company’s strategic value for the entire Italian financial system. The FSI team, after past successful investments in SIA (payments systems) and Metroweb (broadband infrastructure) proved once again its ability and skills to facilitate the scale-up of an Italian digital and technological champion, accompanying it to market leadership at national and international level. Cedacri, SIA and Metroweb are clear examples where the entry of a private equity partner with a patient and partnership approach like FSI, represents an enabler to release the company’s high potential, accelerate growth, create jobs and expand in a sustainable way. FSI intends to continue supporting Italian technological champions like Cedacri, with a view to creating key leaders for the long-term development of digital verticals that play a strategic role within the Italian economy”.
Barnaba Ravanne, FSI CIO, added: “We are thrilled by the result and proud of having found such a great partner for Cedacri’s next growth phase. We would like to thank our shareholding partners for the great collaboration, and especially Corrado Sciolla and his team for the outstanding execution of the plan under his leadership”.
“This transaction strengthens Cedacri’s market positioning” commented Corrado Sciolla, Cedacri CEO. “Cedacri joins ION, a fintech company and international market leader in the development of software and data analysis for large financial institutions, central banks and large corporations. The objective is to create an even more solid and technologically-driven company, integrated in a global network, combining the value of our distinctive skills with a greater strategic and operational dimension. A remarkable progress achieved thanks to the fundamental contribution of FSI that, being the largest shareholder, has accompanied Cedacri with significant expertise in the transformational initiatives of the recent years.”
Deutsche Bank and Pedersoli Studio Legale acted, respectively, as financial and legal adviser to FSI and all the shareholding banks.
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About FSI
FSI sgr S.p.A. (staging-new.fondofsi.it) is an independent management company managing “FSI I”, an Italian Growth Private Equity Fund with capital commitments of ca. €1.4 bln. It is backed by leading Italian institutional investors (including Cassa Depositi e Prestiti), the European Investment Fund (EIF) through the European Investment Bank (EIB), sovereign wealth funds of Middle East, Far East and Central Asia, asset managers, European insurance companies, banks and family offices of large industrial groups.
FSI I targets investments in Partnership with Families and Corporates in mid-market Italian companies with development potential through a differentiated investment formula. The FSI investment formula is based on a moderate recourse to leverage and targets the objective of creating value through organic growth and acquisitions, sector consolidation and succession management. FSI pursues both minority investments with active governance rights and majority investments.
About Cedacri
Cedacri (www.cedacri.it) was founded by banks in 1976 as a consortium with the aim to co-develop their information systems. Headquartered in Collecchio (Parma, Italy), it currently serves more than 200 customers, including banks and financial institutions, and it operates through two proprietary data centers, employing roughly 2,400 people. Cedacri is the leading provider of core banking software platform and services to financial institutions in Italy, representing the third IT banking platform in Italy after Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit in terms of operating scale. Cedacri is among the top 3 leading Italian companies by revenues from IT software and service for financial institutions.
About ION
ION (www.iongroup.com) provides mission-critical trading and workflow automation software and analytics solutions to financial institutions, central banks, governments, and corporates. It operates through 4 main business lines: Markets, Analytics, Treasury and Commodities. The company operates providing services through several brands, including: Fidessa, Dealogic, Mergermarket, Debtwire and Openlink.
ION serves more than 7,500 clients worldwide. Since its founding, ION has grown organically and inorganically, having completed c. 26 acquisitions with more than $10 bln in combined EV. ION has a consolidated experience in asset re-engineering with >100 mln of code lines rewritten over the last 15 years.
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