⁍ NEC Corp 6701.T said on Monday it had agreed to buy Swiss financial software company Avaloq Group AG.

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⁍ The deal is expected to be completed by April 2021 after necessary approvals.

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⁍ NEC has spent the last decade restructuring unprofitable units that lost business to price-competitive Asian rivals.

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– Japan’s NEC Corp. is buying Switzerland’s Avaloq Group AG for $2.1 billion in what it says will help it enter the global digital finance software market, Reuters reports. Avaloq is the No. 1 provider of financial asset management software in Europe, with sales of $664 million in 2017, 70% of which came from Europe. The deal, which is expected to be completed in April 2021, “will spearhead NEC’s entry globally into digital finance software,” the company said in a statement. NEC, which has spent the last decade selling its semiconductor, personal computer, and smartphone units, has since focused on providing governments and businesses with solutions services using its technologies in biometrics, healthcare, data analyses, and telecommunications. It recently received a $560 million investment from Japanese telecoms company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) to beef up its efforts to develop fifth-generation (5G) wireless technologies.