Symphony acquires Cloud9 Technologies in bid to expand customer base
Symphony, a leading financial markets infrastructure and technology platform, has announced its intention to acquire Cloud9 Technologies.
The move comes as Symphony, which is already the communications provider for banks including HSBC (HSBA.L), Credit Suisse (CS) and Citygroup Inc (C), plans to expand its customer base of half a million users.
The acquisition is expected to be the first of several for the company after it previously said it would buy, partner with, or acquire strategic assets for the company and the industry. Symphony is currently valued at $1.4bn (£1.01bn).
As part of the deal, all Cloud9 Technologies’ 100 employees across London and New York will join Symphony’s 400-strong team.
Cloud9, which is a cloud voice platform for financial markets, and electronic communication company, recently closed a $17.5m funding round.
“Symphony is building on our solid technology foundation and global network as we seek to tackle true pain points in markets’ workflows,” Symphony’s chief executive officer, Brad Levy, said.
“With this acquisition, Symphony takes the lead in the nascent market communications space and brings mission-critical trader voice capabilities to the Symphony platform, by adding C9’s features to our secure and compliant communication stack, with chat, voice and video meetings, file and screen sharing.
“Our combined capabilities will allow for more integrated and immediate conversational workflows, and front office users will be better served.”
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In April, Levy told Financial News that he planned to be “active on the M&A front” with a focus on “more modern” companies, of around 10 years old, in Asia, Europe or North America that complemented Symphony's client base or product set.
He said it would form part of a plan to develop Symphony into “the Amazon (AMZN) for financial services”, and that the company wanted to buy tools that enable its clients to better digest large volumes of data as well as tech start-ups in the wealth management sector.
Gerald Starr, CEO of Cloud9 Technologies, said: “The Cloud9 team is excited to join forces with Symphony. It is clear to us that the collective capabilities of our organizations will further drive value to the financial services community, enhancing and accelerating the delivery of secure cloud-based multi-modal communications.”
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