Finsemble and Glue42 had been fierce competitors in providing desktop interoperability technology to capital markets firms, though the companies’ executives were friendly on a personal level and respectful of each other’s businesses.

Earlier this week, the two firms agreed to a merger of equals, with the combined enterprise called interop.io.   

“We’ve both been working in parallel on a very similar vision for how to solve the problems that our industry has around fragmented user experience and workflow,” Dan Schleifer, previously CEO of Finsemble and now President of interop.io, told Markets Media.

“At a certain point, it became clear that we were both investing a lot of money to build basically the same technology to get our customers to the same place, and we’d be able to better serve our customers and the market if we joined forces,” Schleifer said. “As a team, we’re able to innovate twice as fast, and plow more resources into serving our customers instead of investing those resources to simply compete against each other.” 

interop.io brings together the award-winning technologies of both companies to offer a complete suite of interop products, the company said in a June 8 release. At the heart of the platform is io.Connect, which enables clients to build and deploy highly intuitive front ends that combine different applications and functionality into a single, harmonized smart desktop.

Schleifer said he and Leslie Spiro, formerly CEO of Glue42 and now CEO of interop.io, began discussing a merger about nine months ago, and commenced technology due diligence in late 2022.  

“As two technology companies coming together, making sure our technologies can be seamlessly integrated in a way that benefits customers of both product lines is absolutely crucial,” Schleifer said. “Mergers never happen quickly. It’s a very thoughtful exercise to make sure that the technology is compatible, the culture is compatible, the vision is compatible, and that in the end, it will better serve our customers.” 

Spiro highlighted the importance of cultural compatibility. “As we started to bring more people to work together, everybody got on really well, and I think that’s driven primarily by our shared core value of caring about our clients, rather than caring about selling to our clients,” he said. “We really care about how our clients use our technology, and making sure they have a good experience. Figuring out how to do that served as a bond.”

Spiro said Glue42 was heading into a new funding round, and the merger was “a fantastic alternative to raising money…We doubled our client list overnight, and we fill in gaps in each other’s business, both technically but also managerially and geographically.”

Clients will see benefits of the merger “more immediately than you might think,” Spiro said. For example, “there are a couple of products that are part of the Glue42 portfolio, which Finsemble clients can get today.”

interop.io’s clients include large capital markets institutions across the sell side and buy side, ranging from tier one sell-side broker dealers, to $50 billion hedge funds to $200 billion asset managers. 

“These are massive institutions and they want to know that the technology firms that they partner with are stable, profitable, growing, and innovative,” Schleifer said. “The other bit that changes immediately for our clients is a renewed assurance that they have selected the undisputed market leader in interoperability, which will be around for the long haul.”