Sources: Sabadell is in negotiations for a payment agreement with Worldline, Nexi, and Fiserv.
LONDON/MADRID The Spanish lender Sabadell has received an offer of interest from France’s Worldline and the Italian company Nexi (BIT: NEXII) and U.S. firm Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV) for its payment division in a deal that is estimated as high as 400 million euros ($393.64 million) Three sources told.
Sabadell has received non-binding bids this week, and is expected to select a shortlist of bidders who will be finalized in the beginning of October, sources said under the conditions of anonymity.
The Spanish lender will be reviewing the proposals at a board session in the latter part of September, and then proceed into the last auction stages which will allow bidders to perform due diligence on the unit, sources claimed.
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Sabadell, Worldline, Nexi and Fiserv did not respond to requests for comment.
The transaction was managed through Barclays (LON: BARC) it has been made available to industry players, including U.S. major PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and its rivals Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) as well as Network International, while private equity funds were not asked to bid, two sources claimed.
PayPal, FIS and Network International were not immediately available to comment.
The country of Spain, Sabadell has a prominent presence on the payments aspect and is responsible for nearly 16.3 percent of the total revenue at the point of sale (POS).
Its payments unit that focuses primarily on consumer lending, is earning the highest earnings, which range from 25 to 30 million euros, one the sources told.
The company recorded revenues that were 21.6 million euros during the beginning half of 2022 as compared with 15.4 billion euros during the same time frame last year. This is an ongoing source of profitable earnings for banks because payments transactions generally have higher rates of interest than mortgages.
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The deal is expected to be concluded in December, and be followed by the winner signing an ongoing partnership with Sabadell and will be granted the exclusive rights to commercialize loans and financial transactions.
($1 = 1.0162 euros)
