"Reuters obtained a letter in which Jana argues that Fiserv’s current $500 million Project Elevate savings target by 2029 should be raised to about $1.25 billion, and wants management to announce the more aggressive target with third-quarter earnings. Jana is also pushing Fiserv to use Palantir to rationalize technology spending, retire technical debt, and reduce legacy-vendor costs. Fiserv had not responded publicly to Reuters as of the report." https://www.reuters.com/business/activist-jana-pushes-fiserv-accelerate-cost-cuts-tap-palantir-2026-09-28/
23 replies (most recent on top)
Retire Debt. hahahahhahhahahahaha. Maybe when they get bought out and it becomes someone elses debt.
@gg Yeah, sure about Jeff Yabuki. Whatever. What he did wrong was not manage the board better, he was over thrown. Yes he wanted an exit after 16 years of record earnings, but not in favor of what has happened to Fisv now.
Jeff Yabuki gave all of you oFSV people up and none of you want to admit it. He was ready to cash out and didn’t give a damn what Frank wanted to do with the company, he just wanted to do chilll in Shaun Whites old house. The only person he pushed for was dou--ebag Bob Hau, who signed off on all the financial fraud that happened after that
@bq " Eliminate people earning at least 200K. We might have thousands of these. "
You are correct.. This layer's pay structure need to be verified and validated by board.
@bg they can start with the dead weight at the top. That's tens of millions right there in savings. These id--ts don't need to be paid so much to do nothing.
That's unfair. Do you know how many meetings they had to call into to get to that position? How many times they have had to say, "Nothing from my end"? That is the real hard work.
@eh If you're clearing $200k at Fiserv, we all know exactly how hard you had to work for it. Please put the 'hard work' flag down before you hurt yourself.. It proves you survived enough reorgs to outlast everyone. Go ahead and spill the tea on you got your promotion and manage to keep your job through all the reorgs.
@bq Spoken like a flunky who never worked hard enough or has enough knowledge and experience to make $200k. Get bent.
So what? Project Elevate was just a disguised means to identify who to layoff?
Companies stock chasing is insane.
@c6 Lets face it. FrankServe is TRASH. This dump will go up in flames by 2028.
I honestly don’t think AI would ever be able to untangle the spaghetti integrations that fiserv excels in cooking up.
@bx Yabuki is complicit with this mess. Surely he had to know KKR would be the single largest stockholder after his ego bought FD. It was all down hill after that.
@bq Too many VPs !!! making too much money.. can't set a direction, can't manage clients, have no clue about business direction in this very competetive FinTech world.
Fiserv is in a very tough spot, Legacy Tech, grew with 'Bundle the products' & lock 'em up for a decade ' strategy ain't going to work anymore.. The greatest ( Digital Equipment Corp, Xerox, Sybase.. ) all demised.. atleast they all had 'invented' their own tech. Fiserv never invented/created anything industry shattering !!!
Keep up the pressure Jana and this time drive REAL CHANGE so Fiserv can be great again! Bring back Yabuki to fix this mess, he might be the only path! I hope Jana is able to drive some real change like they did at breaking FIS up and bringing the old CEO back to WorldPay.
Fiserv will never face the tough facts and cut MC or friends of MC, So much waste at the tippy top and they focus on cutting SMEs. Good for Jana to put pressure... hope they continue!!
@OP Eliminate people earning at least 200K. We might have thousands of these.
Didn’t Jana leave, divest or something?
Pretty strong stuff from Jana, saying Project Elevate doesn’t go neatly far enough and Takis needs to more than double the savings committed to. Layoffs aren’t going to save another $700 million. Need some big moves at next earnings.
Good luck doing all of that when they've let go of so many staff
What a cluster-f
The company has been trying to upgrade these systems for years. If it was easy it would already be done. Perfect example is the Issuer Mainframe Modernization that Fiserv has been dumping money in for years. Every date has been missed, clients are pushing back on it. No ramifications for senior leadership that allow these projects to continue to burn funds without adding value. I’m sure it will be done next year…. If not, we will continue to cut cost of living increases so we can fund it.
"retire technical debt" - there goes a few billion to upgrade that junk.