Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Visa's IPO

You probably have seen the headlines that Visa went public in largest IPO ever. Here are two interesting looks at it

From the San Francisco Chronicle--Visa draws high card:
"Visa's underwriters got commitments from buyers to take 406 million shares at $44 per share, raising $17.9 billion, by far the largest IPO ever carried out in the United States."
The NY Times looks at how much Investment Bankers will make on the deal:
" ...the offering will generate a windfall for Visa’s thousands of member banks, which own the company. JPMorgan Chase is expected to reap about $1.25 billion, while Citigroup and Wells Fargo are likely to receive several hundred million dollars each."
Forbes focuses on what the money will be used for:
"The credit-card processing company plans to use roughly $10.2 billion in proceeds to redeem shares held by selling stakeholders and has reserved $3 billion to cover litigation costs. The company has been involved in several major suits with competitors and disgruntled card users.

Remaining proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What do you think about the comments by Adam Letvin at Credit Slips on the interchange fee and Visa antitrust?

I think this IPO looks good right now, but I wonder if it's just delaying the inevitable. If the Federal Reserve doesn't step in, then Congress may act. It sure seems like Visa and MasterCard have a monopoly now -- it's close -- but if merchants grow even unhappier, they could lose out to one of the new innovative payuments startups like Ted Leonsis' Revolution Card.