French Giant Plots £11bn Worldpay Merger

A French payments processing giant has tabled a proposal for an £11bn merger with its UK rival Worldpay that would derail its plans for a bumper London flotation.

Sky News has learnt that Ingenico Group, which is listed on the Euronext stock exchange, submitted an offer to buy Worldpay earlier this week that is said to have valued it at more than £6bn.

Ingenico, which has a market value of €7.1bn (£5.2bn), is said to be determined to see off competition from rival bids from Germany's Wirecard and a private equity consortium comprising Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Singapore's Government Investment Corporation.

The bidders are trying to persuade Advent International and Bain Capital, Worldpay's existing owners, to abandon plans to float the company by offering greater certainty in the form of a full exit.

At least one of the offers from potential buyers is understood to value Worldpay in the region of £6.5bn.

There are said to be opportunities to create substantial synergies from a combination with one of Worldpay's European competitors.

The alternative of a takeover has been thrown into sharper focus by the turbulence which has hit global equity markets in the last fortnight, triggered by concerns about China's economic growth.

Bankers say that a return to the level of turmoil seen at beginning of this week would oblige some companies seeking public share offerings to pursue sales or delay their plans.

Advent and Bain are likely to decide within the next few weeks which route to take, with Worldpay set to be propelled straight into the FTSE-100 if they opt for a public listing.

An insider said there had been strong interest from institutional investors in buying Worldpay shares.

Worldpay is performing well, with unaudited results for the first half of this calendar year showing a 13% rise in underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to £182.6m.

Philip Jansen, Worldpay's chief executive, said the results reflected its "ongoing focus on investing in technology and building our business, developing new and innovative products and meeting the evolving needs of our customers to help them prosper".

"Our continued investment in technology and customer service is complemented by a number of new and exciting products launched during 2015. Combined with Worldpay’s global reach and capability this creates significant opportunities to continue to grow our business," he said.

The news of Ingenico's interest comes just days before Sir Mike Rake, the City grandee, takes over as Worldpay's chairman.

The appointment of ‎Sir Mike, who replaces John Allan, the new chairman of Tesco. sparked concern at the banking regulator because of his intention to step down from Barclays' board during a period of upheaval for the lender.

The looming change of ownership comes roughly five years after Worldpay was sold by the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in a deal worth approximately £2bn.‎

Advent and Bain bought Worldpay as the taxpayer-backed lender sought to dispose of assets following its £45.5bn bail-out.‎ ‎‎

The payments group has grown at a spectacular rate since then, with Mr Jansen, a former executive with the catering group Sodexo and MyTravel, the tour operator, spearheading the company's growth.

Specialising in the provision of secure payment services, its major corporate customers include Google and Sony.

Comparable listed companies such as Wirecard and Brazil’s Cielo usually trade at valuations worth between 14 and 20 times their annual profits.

With Worldpay expected to record around £400m of pre-tax profit in 2015, a similar valuation range would attribute a price tag of between £5.6bn and £8bn to the company.

In the UK, Worldpay combines the former Streamline business with Cardsave, YESpay and Zinc, handling well over half of all card transactions.

The company sees further growth opportunities in the ongoing push to open up payment systems, with a new regulator recently assuming oversight of the industry in the UK.

Worldpay, which declined to comment, also owns a valuable stake in Visa Europe, which is in talks about a takeover by its US cousin, Visa Inc.