SunGard buys Irish firm Delphi

03-07-2008

by Deirdre McArdle

Dublin-based Delphi Technologies has been acquired by US firm SunGard for an undisclosed sum.

Under the deal, Delphi, which provides consulting and managed professional services to the telecoms and financial services sectors, will become part of SunGard's European consulting business. Financial details were not revealed but reports suggest the Irish firm is worth around EUR20 million.

Delphi was founded in 1998 by Martin Walsh. It employs 140 highly skilled IT professionals who specialise in providing services such as project management, business analysis, application development, QA and testing. Walsh believes being a part of SunGard will help Delphi expand its market reach and maintain its solid growth of the past number of years.

The Dublin firm posted pre-tax profits of EUR1.1 million for the year to 30 June 2007, down slightly on the EUR1.2 million reported the previous year.

SunGard European Consulting Services business president Didier Neyrat explained the firm's reasoning for buying Delphi. "SunGard's acquisition of Delphi serves three key purposes: it further extends our consulting capabilities in Europe, growing our number of consultants to over 700; it broadens our solution set to cover specific quality and testing skills; and it helps to build our infrastructure in a country where SunGard has more than 50 customers. Delphi has a good reputation and an excellent customer base, and we look forward to integrating it with SunGard Consulting Services over the coming months."

Headquartered in Pennsylvania in the US, SunGard provides software and processing solutions for the financial services industry, higher education and the public sector. The firm employs over 17,900 people in 30 countries.