Activist Jana Partners Takes Stake in Fiserv, Pushes for Strategic Overhaul After 67% Stock Plunge

Activist investor Jana Partners has disclosed a position in Fiserv and is pressing the payments giant to accelerate its turnaround efforts following a brutal 2025 that saw shares crater more than 67%, according to a regulatory filing and people familiar with the matter.

Jana revealed it has acquired 2.2 million shares in Fiserv—a stake of less than one percent—sending the company's stock up more than 6% on the news. The move marks the latest activist campaign targeting a fintech company struggling to translate its scale into shareholder returns, and it comes at a particularly vulnerable moment for Fiserv's management team.

The timing is pointed. Late last year, CEO Mike Lyons acknowledged the company's performance crisis in unusually blunt terms: "Our current performance is not where we want it to be nor where our stakeholders expect it to be." That admission came after a year in which Fiserv's stock became one of the worst performers in the payments sector, raising questions about whether the company's sprawling portfolio of businesses—from merchant acquiring to core banking software—had become too unwieldy to manage effectively.

Lyons responded by launching what the company calls the "One Fiserv action plan," aimed at improving execution and refreshing the board. Jana appears to support those initial moves, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, but the activist is pushing for more aggressive action. Specifically, Jana wants Fiserv to speed up expansion of its core banking operations and launch another strategic review that could include divesting non-core assets.

Here's what Jana apparently isn't pushing for, at least not yet: a full breakup of Fiserv's payments and fintech businesses. That's notable, because activist campaigns at conglomerates often culminate in demands to split the company entirely. The fact that Jana is stopping short of that nuclear option suggests either that the economics of a split don't work, or that the firm believes Lyons's turnaround plan deserves a chance—provided it moves faster and goes deeper than management might prefer.

For CFOs watching this play out, the Fiserv situation is a case study in what happens when a company's operational complexity starts to obscure rather than create value. Fiserv operates in multiple segments of financial services infrastructure, from payment processing to banking software to merchant services. In theory, that diversification should provide stability. In practice, when execution falters across multiple business lines simultaneously, investors start to wonder whether anyone can actually manage the whole thing.

The company's statement in response to Jana's disclosure was carefully diplomatic: "During the past several months, we have engaged with many of our shareholders, including Jana Partners. We value shareholder perspectives as we drive progress through our One Fiserv action plan." Translation: we saw this coming, we've been talking to them, and we're already working on it.

The real question is whether "working on it" will be fast enough for Jana. Activist investors don't typically build stakes in companies and then wait patiently for multi-year transformation plans to play out. They want visible progress on a timeline that moves the stock price within quarters, not years. That means Fiserv's management now faces a delicate balancing act: execute the turnaround quickly enough to satisfy an impatient activist, but not so recklessly that they create new operational problems in the rush to show results.

For finance leaders at other fintech companies, the lesson is straightforward: when your stock falls 67% in a year, someone is going to show up asking hard questions about whether your strategy makes sense. Better to ask those questions yourself before the activists do.