Vantiv is a payments processing firm big in the United States. Worldpay will be familiar to many as a big player in payments in the UK and also US and elsewhere. The two will be merging and details have emerged of the deal.
Vantiv will pay 397p for each share in Worldpay, a total of £8bn including an extra sum of £1.3bn to cover debts. Vantiv stockholders will take a majority 57% share of the combined group and Worldpay investors will hold the remaining 43%.
Vantiv’s president and CEO Charles Drucker said: “Our combined company will have unparalleled scale, a comprehensive suite of solutions, and the worldwide reach to make us the payments industry global partner of choice.” Ongoing, the company will be known as Worldpay. HQ will be in Cincinnati, Ohio in the US. There will an office in NYC and international operations will be based in London. On reason why the deal took longer than expected to finalise was the key concern of protecting the British based jobs.
In terms of personnel, Charles Drucker will serve as executive chairman and joint chief executive. Philip Jansen will report to him as the co-chief executive. Stephanie Ferris will be the chief finance officer with other high level appointments to be made in due course.
Additional members of the new executive team will be announced at a later date. The UK company’s chairman Sir Michael Rake and his counterpart at Vantiv, Jeffrey Stiefler, will remain on the board as non-executive directors. The board will consist of four Worldpay and seven Vantiv directors.
Worldpay is currently the biggest payments processing firm in the UK and this $10bn deal merges two big companies. It seems likely in the short term that there will be little to no obvious impact to users of the two product day to day.
