Canadian investment house Aquila has announced the acquisition of US-based software development company Cibar, which includes letter of credit (L/C) solutions amongst its portfolio of offerings for the international trade finance industry.

Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Colorado Springs, Cibar has been a pioneer and specialised provider of trade finance applications with a range of modules for several offerings, including commercial and standby L/Cs, bankers' acceptances, documentary collections, foreign loans, cash letters and international wires.

Commercial and standby L/Cs

Through its GTSnet trade finance system, ICCnet customer portal and CASHnet cash letter system, Cibar provides comprehensive back-office solutions that meet the needs of large and middle-market trade finance banks and their clients.

GTSnet is Cibar's client-server, back-office, trade finance system, which includes L/C functionality and can scale in size from a small regional bank to a global trade bank.

Cibar also offers a standby L/C version of GTSnet. It provides banks with the ability to process standby L/Cs, including auto extension credits, automated evergreen renewals, direct payments, auto increase/decrease schedules and automated fee billing.

Visions aligned

The US-based company has so far resisted being acquired, according to its president, Nick Mayer. "In our 53 years in business we never really considered selling the company until we were introduced to Daniel Lee and his team at Aquila. As we went through a detailed due diligence process, it became apparent that Aquila's vision aligned with Cibar's," he says.

Aquila's strategy is different from other types of investors such private equity or venture capital firms. Its business strategy is to acquire software companies, and then hold them for the long term through what it calls permanent capital.

Cibar says it will continue to support its customers and partners as an autonomous business unit of Aquila.

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or Coastline Solutions.