Worldline S.A. entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to acquire PaySquare BV from Equens SE for €72 million.
November 03, 2015
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Worldline S.A. (ENXTPA:WLN) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to acquire PaySquare BV from Equens SE for €72 million in cash on November 3, 2015. In a related deal, a new entity Equens Worldline Company will be created and Worldline S.A. will receive 63.6% of newly created Equens shares in exchange of the merger of its current Financial and Acquiring processing activities in Germany, France and Benelux with the corresponding Equens processing activities. PaySquare had revenue of €75 million. The deal is subject to work councils' information and consultation processes in Worldline and Equens, as well as regulatory and antitrust authorities' approvals. On April 20, 2016, the transaction was approved by European Commission.
The transaction is expected to close in the 2nd quarter of 2016. Matthias Kasch, Christian Bock, Bodo Bender, Martin Munz, Markus Mette, Justus Herrlinger, Nathalie Negre-Eveillard, Muriel Alhadeff and Alann Le Guillou of White & Case LLP acted as legal advisors for Equens SE. Nomura acted as financial advisor for Equens. Arne Grimme, Ferdinand Hengst and Jorine ten Wolde of De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek acted as legal advisors for Rabobank. Jeremy Scemama, Bertrand Levy, Caroline Daout, Richard Fens, Stéphane Robyns de Schneidauer, Pieter Paul Terpstra, Marie Hindre, Philippe Danesi, Virginie Lescot, Eva Amor, Fayrouze Masmi-Dazi, Arielle Locoh-Donou, Florian Hirschmann, Silvio McMiken, Catherine Pogorzelski, Cécile Szymanski, Lu Zhang, Thomas Duong, Julien Farhi, Kenza Alaoui Amini, Connie van Niekerk and Xavier Guzman of DLA Piper acted as legal advisors for Worldline. Linklaters acted as legal advisor for Equens. Allen & Overy acted as legal advisor for ICBPI. Jeroen Thijssen, Michiel Sunderman, Joris Naalden, Door Hendriksen, Frans Muller, Jan Hendrik Horsmeier, Lotte van Aanholt, Robert Smits and Wybren van der Ze of Clifford Chance acted as legal advisors for ABN. BNP Paribas acted as financial advisor to Worldline.
Worldline is one of the world's leading providers of electronic payment and transactional services. Net sales break down by activity as follows:
- merchant services (72.1%): this division enables merchants to increase their sales and improve their customers' experience in a secure and trusted environment, with exceptional expertise and pan-European coverage;
- financial services (20.5%): this division, leader in Europe, provides financial data processing and enables financial institutions to deploy transformative technologies, manage risk and fraud, optimize processes and ensure operational excellence;
- mobility & transactional web services (7.4%): this division provides, beyond payment processing, expertise in new markets with secure dematerialization, Internet of Things and electronic ticketing solutions.
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: France (12.1%), Southern Europe (20%), Central and Eastern Europe (34.5%), Northern Europe (23.2%) and other (10.2%).
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