If you're looking for your next adventure, check out our fintech Talent Collective (TWIF 12/18)

Hello Fintech Friends,

We’d love to hear your fintech predictions for 2023! Send us your most controversial and outlandish takes by replying to this email, and we’ll post our favorites in the first edition of the new year.

Programming Note: We’ll be taking a break the last couple weeks of the year to recharge and come back with more fintech news, more fintech jobs and talent matches, more podcasts, a bigger community, even better events, and more fintech.

(But keep a look out for our pending Abu Dhabi and Dubai Fintech Trek update next week.)

PSA: Our Talent Collective. Many fintech companies are dealing with difficult situations at the moment. We are trying to do everything we can to help people moving between jobs find their next role. If you’re looking for your next company to join, come check out our job board. If your company is hiring for new roles, come post them with us! And if you want employers to find your (anonymized) résumé, join our Talent Collective.

Please find another week of fintech exits and deep reads below and have a great end of the year.

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Indian digital payments giant Paytm is planning to buy back up to $103 million of shares in order to steady a stock price that has been in freefall since its IPO last year.

☯️ Exits

🤝 M&A - Fintech

In one of the (likely) last mega-mergers of the year, private equity giant Thoma Bravo acquired corporate spend management platform Coupa for $8 billion.
Insight Partners is weighing a $2 billion sale of its property Community Brands, which builds software for donations and peer-to-peer fundraising.
Brazilian fintech Open Co acquired buy-now-pay-later provider BoletoFlex to move into lending.
Chime reportedly made two offers to buy DailyPay for up to $2 billion.
British wealth management tech provider Moneyfarm announced that it will acquire digital pension advisor Profile Pensions.
TradeSun, the provider of an AI solution for trade compliance, acquired ESG compliance software company Coriolis.
United Fintech acquired risk data services provider Cobalt to strengthen its digital asset trading platform.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

Microsoft took a £1.5 billion stake in the London Stock Exchange as part of a deal for the exchange to buy cloud space and surfaces from Microsoft’s Azure.
Belgian bank Euroclear will acquire Goji, a London-based provider of digital access and technology to private markets.
Indian financial services conglomerate Poonawalla Fincorp will sell its housing finance unit to private equity firm TPG for ₹39 billion ($473 million).
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is in advanced talks to acquire Egypt’s United Bank for $600 million.
Abu Dhabi state holding firm ADQ is leading a consortium to acquire a controlling stake in Israeli financial services provider Phoenix Group for $800 million.
Australian bank Westpac walked away from its planned acquisition of domestic Eftpos provider Tyro Payments.

Wrote about bank portability
- who needs it (startups issuing financial instruments)
- when to get it (when you're scaling)
- how to prep for it (get a bin, routing number, and abstracted ledger)

would be less necessary if there was a clear path for new banks to form pic.twitter.com/yIY0lrE5OU
— kunle.app (@ay_o) December 15, 2022

Thoma Bravo $8b for Coupa is an 8.7x multiple on management projections of next twelve month revenue, with new ACV booking decelerating (negative bookings in Q3) and revenue growth + rule of 40 also declining dramatically.

2023: expect a lot more LBO's of tech companies... pic.twitter.com/mF5MkydyOY
— Charley Ma (@CharleyMa) December 12, 2022

The @FDICgov released a proposal to update and strengthen these rules so people know the insured status of their funds. We look forward to reviewing public input. https://t.co/9jVvkttWs1
— Rohit Chopra (@chopracfpb) December 15, 2022

This week for our Fintech Frontlines Series, we are highlighting Sara Tabana, Head of Fintech & Ventures MENA for @Visamiddleeast. Sara is passionate about creating innovative strategies and setting clear indicators that significantly improve the well-being of our societies! pic.twitter.com/razulDE9AW
— This Week in Fintech (@twifintech) December 14, 2022