BY Richard Summerfield
France’s two biggest payments companies are to merge after Worldline agreed to acquire rival Ingenico for $8.7bn.
The deal will see Ingenico shareholders receive 11 Worldline shares and €160.50 in cash for every seven Ingenico shares held—a 24 percent premium on Ingenico’s average share price over the last month. Pending regulatory and shareholder approvals, the deal is expected to close in Q3 2020. Under the terms of the deal, Gilles Grapinet, chairman and chief executive of Worldline, will lead the combined company.
“I am proud to announce that today is a great day for Worldline and for Ingenico, and more widely for our payment industry: together we create the European world-class leader in digital payments,” said Mr Grapinet. “We deeply respect Ingenico and its team for the deep business repositioning of their company realised over the last years into one of the largest European payment service providers with outstanding global positions in online payments and merchant acquiring. We have been impressed by the strong improvement in performance realised over the last 18 months under the leadership of Nicolas Huss, as well as by the in-depth transformation initiated at the same time of their global leading payment terminal business, resulting in increased efficiency, more autonomy and a new strategic roadmap.”
“The combination of Worldline and Ingenico offers a unique opportunity to create the undisputed European champion in payments on par with the largest international players,” said Bernard Bourigeaud, chairman of Ingenico. “This transaction comes at the time of accelerating consolidation of the industry and I am convinced that the joined forces of both leaders will deeply transform the industry. I am very pleased to write a new page in the European payment landscape and build the foundation of a strong and breakthrough payment player. This transaction is unanimously supported by Worldline and Ingenico’s board of directors and I would be very proud to become the non-executive chairman of the board of directors at closing to pursue this exceptional success story.”
The combined company will have 20,000 employees across 50 countries with 1 million merchant and 1200 financial institution customers. Worldline said it expects combined proforma 2019 net revenues of €5.3bn out of the deal.
News: Worldline's $8.7 billion Ingenico deal to create European payments leader