Worldpay Owners Pick Goldman For £6bn Float

The owners of Worldpay, the UK-based payment processing group, are close to appointing bankers to prepare a stock market flotation that could value it at a staggering £6bn.

Sky News has learnt that Advent International and Bain Capital, the two buyout firms which have controlled Worldpay since 2010, are on the verge of appointing Goldman Sachs to undertake a review of their options.

The most likely outcome of the Goldman-led review is a decision to pursue a listing for which stock exchanges in London and New York would be expected to compete, according to sources.

If it opted to float in London, Worldpay would be catapulted straight into the FTSE-100 index.

Worldpay has grown at a spectacular rate since it was carved out of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) five years ago in a deal worth around £2bn.

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

It processes 26 million transactions daily and operates in more than 40 countries.

The timing of an initial public offering (IPO) is uncertain and will depend on market conditions, but it is thought likely to take place next year.

Comparable listed companies such as Wirecard and Brazil’s Cielo tend to trade at 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 taking responsibility for the industry earlier this month.

The sale of Worldpay was among the conditions imposed on RBS by the European Commission in return for the £45.5bn of state aid received by the bank during the financial crisis.

For the last two years, the company has been led by Philip Jansen, a former executive with the catering group Sodexo and MyTravel, the tour operator.

Under his leadership, it has begun implementing a new brand identity using the slogan "Leaders in Modern Money".

Worldpay’s chairman is John Allan, who has just taken over in the same role at Tesco, which this week announced one of the biggest annual losses ever recorded by a British company.

Since its takeover by Advent and Bain, Worldpay has sharply increased both turnover and profits, with Mr Jansen’s predecessor as chief executive saying the company had been "unshackled" by the sale.

Worldpay, Advent and Bain all declined to comment.