There was quite a bit of M&A activity last week. Oracle and BEA for $8.5 billion (we’ll have to see whether that’s good news for BEA’s Weblogic Event Server), Sun Microsystems and MySQL for a billion, and NYSE-Euronext snapping up Wombat Financial Software for $200 million.
For Wombat – headquartered in Nevada’s Incline Village where VC/incubator history is legend – an exit strategy was always in the plan from day one. Most observers suggest the price was a great one for Wombat and with a sellout to Thomson (as many once predicted) stymied by the Reuters deal (whether it happens or not), and the prospect of a tough economy ahead, the timing was probably bang on too.
The questions now being asked: Will Wombat be more or less of a competitor to the likes of Reuters, 29 West and RTI? Will the vendor still be actively selling its feed handlers, messaging middleware, entitlements system and its data fabric offering, or will it become mostly focused on filling in the gaps in NYSE-Euronext’s offerings? Is this good news for its competitors?
And also: will it now put as much effort into developing its datafeed handlers for exchanges and liquidity pools, other than those of its parent? Will the playing field be level? Or will delivering the best NYSE-Euronext feed handlers be the priority?
And in a year when there will be consolidation (as predicted by A-Team in our ‘Faster Than A Speeding Bullet …‘ last year), well, who’s gonna be next?
Until next time … here’s some great music. [tags]wombat,wombat financial software,nyse,nyse-euronext,datafeed handlers,reuters,29 west,rti[/tags]
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