As a solid, second-tier treasury workstation provider, Selkirk Financial Technologies regularly received feelers from competitors and potential partners who wanted to buy the company. Until recently, James Suttie, founder and principal owner, turned them all away. Then, he surprised a lot of observers by saying "yes" to a bid from Thomson Corp. In mid-September, Suttie went from being CEO, reporting only to a friendly board and God, to being executive vice president for treasury services, reporting to the president of Thomson Financial.

For Suttie and co-founder Lyndon Harvey, the consequences from the sale of Selkirk are pretty evident–presumably a nice financial windfall, new jobs for Suttie and Harvey (who will be Thomson's new vice president of sales for treasury products), a far bigger sandbox in which to play and, possibly, bigger and more plentiful toys with which to tinker.

But what does the sale mean for the rest of the treasury technology market? On the surface, Thomson bought one more small company with a respectable brand name and product in the financial software world. As a pure cross-sell play, Thomson now has an inside track to peddle its treasury information services to 70-some Selkirk clients, assuming none of those Selkirk clients already use Thomson.