Glenn Hutchins, co-CEO of investment technology at private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, delivered some grim news yesterday to a packed room of financial services industry executives attending the SunGard City Day event in New York City.

"It's going to take 18 to 36 months before we see sustainable growth," he told the crowd of SunGard brokerage, banking and insurance customers. "If you are a business planner, you have to plan for this kind of growth," advised Hutchins, a private equity investor whose company owns SunGard, the software and IT services giant. Hutchins, who studied the causes of the financial panic of 2008 and has written on the topic in Fortune magazine and the Financial Times, warned listeners that the entire U.S. government stimulus package, totaling $780 billion, is not big enough to make up for the loss of consumer demand, which he put at $800 billion-plus annually.

At the time the $10.5 trillion mortgage bubble burst, it was the largest asset market, and caused U.S. consumers to lose more than $14 trillion, he explained. "Everyone is at fault. Everyone in our society is part of this binge of overspending and overconsumption -- consumers, businesses, financials all levered up," said Hutchins.

But Hutchins, an entrepreneur who has backed a series of upstart electronic brokerage companies, including Datek, Instinet and Ameritrade, that have brought efficiencies and lower costs, urged the financial executives to invest in technology and innovation. "Technology is where you want to be," said Hutchins, telling customers that their focus should be on "extend[ing] your lead and tak[ing] share from your competitors." Investment in technology could also, he suggested, help firms to take advantage of their competitors' distress. Hutchins noted that SunGard has weathered such a downturn before -- when the Internet tech bubble collapsed in 2001, a period he recalled as worse than the current turmoil. According to the co-CEO, SunGard's experienced management and private ownership proved valuable advantages in navigating the economic recovery.