Citigroup's acquisition of Bisys strengthens its hand in the lucrative fund-services business

CitiGroup makes a big step forward with their Global Transaction Services group in acquiring Bisys, an Investment Services provider with $815 billion in assets under administration (see also Bloomberg comments).

As the sources say: "With this acquisition, Citi will become a top-three player in transfer agency, fund administration and accounting for U.S. mutual funds." and "In hedge funds area the acquisition positions Citi to compete against top custodians Bank of New York Mellon Corp., State Street Corp. and JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services."

This means a lot of system migrations, primarily for fund accounting. Since CitiGroup is using MultiFonds, IGEFI will be busy helping CitiGroup to manage the absorption of Bisys assets on its own IT platform.