The IPO window remains locked shut (TWIF 4/16)

"A reminder about the lovely hand drawn animated film “The Illusionist” following a down-at-heels French performer with Scotland and Edinburgh scenes."

Hello Fintech Friends,

In this week's Signals subscriber newsletter, guest writer Emily Tsitrian – a foremr Stripe employee and co-founder of Yeeld – wrote on what everyone is getting wrong in the Adyen vs. Stripe debate.

"These analysts deserve respect and are worth a read - quantitative triangulation is hard, but unfortunately, in this case, wrong. Payments, it turns out, is not a commodity." - Emily Tsitrian

Elsewhere, Business Insider did what it usually does and wrote about 27 fintechs that could be acquisition targets, including Affirm, Melio, Pipe, Synapse, Deserve, Clear, Klarna, Bond, Cardless, Ramp, and more...

What do people think? Which of these companies will acquire, and which will be acquired, if any?

Lastly - a shout out to our friends Ahmed Siddiqui and Ricky Graziosi, who recently completed an AMA with us and co-host a monthly Payments 101 course based on the book “Anatomy of the Swipe.” They are offering TWIF subscribers $95 off their next cohort with the code twif95.

👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know!

Please find another week of fintech exits and deep reads below.

📺

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☯️ Exits

US IPO proceeds over the past seven years show that the IPO window is still closed:

🤝 M&A - Fintech

British fintech developer UTP Group, which operates mobile card reader app app Tapeeno, will acquire the Spanish customers of German card payment app Wellet.
Private equity giant KKR agreed to buy a stake in global financial communications firm FGS Global, valuing the firm at $1.4 billion.
Capital markets risk technology provider Numerix announced its acquisition of pricing and risk analytics firm FINCAD.
Publicly-listed Network International Holdings, a Middle Eastern credit card processor, is attracting international buyout interest from private equity firms at its £1.3 billion market price.
Accounts payable automation provider Paymerang acquired invoice provider KwikTag.
Asian crypto lender Amber is considering a sale of its Japanese subsidiary.

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

Bank Dhofar, Oman’s second-largest bank, is considering a merger with its smaller rival Ahli Bank. The combined bank would hold $19 billion in assets. There are 20 banks in Oman, which cater to 5 million customers.
OneDigital Investment Advisors bought the 401k unit of Huntington National Bank.

This week for the Fintech Frontlines Series, we highlight Jessica Holzbach, Co-Founder and CEO of Pile that offers treasury products for high growth startups. Jessica is a serial entrepreneur and most recently the founder of Penta, a challenger bank for SMEs and freelancers. pic.twitter.com/S1R3kkzBRl
— This Week in Fintech (@twifintech) April 13, 2023

Prime age employment rebounded in just three years following the covid pandemic -- it took 12 years to rebound to prior levels after the 2008 financial crisishttps://t.co/eCNxJh7yIL pic.twitter.com/0l16qC8dsT
— Nik (@NikMilanovic) April 10, 2023