TOKYO - Japan's NEC Corp. said on Monday it had agreed to buy Swiss financial software company Avaloq Group AG for 2.05 billion Swiss francs ($2.2 billion), a move that will spearhead its entry globally into finance software.

NEC will acquire unlisted Avaloq, Europe's top provider of financial asset management software, from private equity firm Warburg Pincus, which has a 45% stake and engineered the sale, and Avaloq's founder and employees.

Avaloq reported sales of 610 million Swiss francs ($664 million) last year, 70 percent of which came from Europe.

NEC has spent the last decade restructuring unprofitable units that lost business to price-competitive Asian rivals, selling its semiconductor, personal computer and smartphone units.

The company 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 64.5 billion yen ($560 million) investment from Japanese telecoms company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) to beef up its efforts to develop fifth-generation (5G) wireless technologies.

NEC held around 400 billion yen ($3.8 billion) in cash and cash equivalents at the end of June. The deal is expected to be completed by April 2021 after necessary approvals.