Accenture has acquired consulting and systems integration services provider Formicary in an apparent move to build a better financial services platform for banks and retail industry. The acquisition comes barely week after the global IT consulting giant acquired Beacon Consulting Group, an asset management consultancy armed with financial consulting capabilities.
Some analysts say Accenture could be hunting for technology expertise that helps build a trading platform that supports blockchain technology, a public ledger of Bitcoin transactions. Such a platform will bring new level of automation and transparency to a wide range of services, including stock exchanges and other financial markets.
Financial services is one of the key domains of Accenture, and this acquisition brings a long list of expertise for it. Formicary comes with 65 employees specialized in financial trading systems consulting, systems integration, and migration.
Accenture said the acquisition will further strengthen its capabilities in helping banks, asset managers, hedge funds and clearing organizations transform their trading technology platforms, because Formicary has lengthy experience in implementing popular trading platforms such as Murex, Calypso, and Misys Summit.
“With highly skilled professionals and deep market experience in everything from digital transformation to global regulatory compliance, Formicary will help us strengthen our trading services capabilities to help financial services firms become more competitive and adaptive to change in continuously evolving markets,” said Owen Jelf, global managing director of Accenture’s capital markets practice.
Formicary, whose clients are scattered across the U.K. and North America, was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, Toronto, and New York. Its clients include investment banks, hedge funds, clearing houses, and fund administrators.
“As significant cost pressures continue to force capital markets firms to re-evaluate their trading capabilities, our combined efforts will enable us to deliver large-scale digital transformations that can help them reduce costs while increasing the scale and profitability of their trading operations,” said Joseph Do, managing director at Formicary.
Add comment