American Express, Permira unite to seek payment prize
By Caroline Copley |
May 18, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AMERICAN Express had teamed up with United Kingdom private-equity firm Permira to bid for Royal Bank of Scotland's US$4 billion payment- processing arm, insiders said yesterday.
French software firm Atos Origin had also joined the private-equity consortium of CVC Capital Partners and Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe to bid for RBS's Global Merchant Services (GMS) unit, an insider said.
About six firms or consortia are in the hunt to buy GMS, which includes the WorldPay business and is expected to fetch between 2.5 billion and 3 billion pounds Sterling (US$3.7 billion-US$4.4 billion).
RBS, 83 percent state-owned, is being forced by European competition authorities to sell WorldPay and other assets as a cost of taking billions of pounds of taxpayer cash during the financial crisis.
Its sale of 318 branches was nearing a conclusion, with Spain's Santander and National Australia Bank now conducting detailed due diligence, insiders said. Spain's BBVA has shown an interest in the network but0020is seen as unlikely to reach the final round.
RBS and its commodities venture with Sempra Energy are in the process of selling the rest of their North American assets after selling non-United States businesses to JPMorgan for US$1.7 billion in February.
The remaining business had drawn a variety of suitors, including independent oil trader Vitol Group, The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday. Other suitors included oil and utility companies and banks with little exposure to US regulation, it said.
Bidders have uniting to buy WorldPay, which is likely to be a complex business to separate and run.
Five bids, including four from private-equity firms, were last month included to move through to the second round of bidding for WorldPay, sources told Reuters.
They included Canada's Moneris Solutions, TPG, Warburg Pincus and joint suitors Advent International and Bain Capital.
RBS, American Express, Permira and Atos Origin declined to comment or could not immediately be reached.
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