Who wants Barclays' merchant payments unit? (TWIF 9/22)

Hello Fintech Friends,

Find us out in the wild this fall:

Please find another week of fintech exits and deep reads below. (👍👎 Have feedback for us? Let us know! Enjoying TWIF? Tips are always appreciated 🙏)

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📖 Reads of the Week

I found two longer fintech reads this week enjoyable and thought-provoking: Bessemer's writeup, The fintech entrepreneurs’ guide to creating enterprise value starts with contribution profit, and Alex Johnson's guest piece for Open Banker, Killing Fintech Isn’t an Option. I hope you will too.

Congress just put the SEC's bad-faith regulation of crypto in the hot seat

Here are the spiciest clips from today's hearing 🌶👇
— Bankless (@BanklessHQ) September 18, 2024

☯️ Exits

🤝 M&A - Fintech

Hummingbird*, a financial crime risk management software provider, agreed to acquire LogicLoop*, a provider of no-code data integration and automation solutions.
The London Stock Exchange Group acquired Veris, a post-trade processing platform, from New York-based financial markets infrastructure provider Axoni (in which it owns a stake) for an undisclosed sum.
NeoXam, a French data management, reporting, portfolio accounting and transaction software solutions provider, will acquire EZOPS, a provider of AI-enabled data control, workflow automation, reconciliation, and regulatory reporting technology.
CSI, a modern banking stack software provider, will acquire Velocity Solutions, which provides banks account and deposit acquisition, customer engagement and retention solutions.
Financial software giant Finastra is working with investment bank Evercore to sell off its Treasury and Capital Markets business for a price around $2 billion.
Private equity firm Advent International is in talks to sell the European identity authentication business of Idemia to France's IN Groupe.

Was chatting with a well-known founder yesterday about the "founder mode" discussion.

We were both wondering if people would misinterpret it, and undervalue the importance of hiring great leaders. Steve Jobs, the canonical example of "founder mode", was also gifted at…
— Patrick Collison (@patrickc) September 15, 2024

🏦 M&A - Bank and FinServ

Citigroup is selling its trust services business to professional services provider JTC for $80 million.
Barclays is having a hard time selling off a stake in its UK merchant payments unit with potential buyers baulking at the bank's valuation of the business. The valuation is undisclosed, but has already been written down by £300 million.
American regional bank EverBank agreed to acquire Sterling Bank, a bank with $900 million of loans, $2 billion of deposits, and 25 branches across California and New York.
India's IndoStar Capital entered a $209 million deal to sell its home finance unit to private equity firm EQT.
Private equity firm Carlyle is buying a minority stake in North Bridge , a finance firm that focuses on a type of private credit lending to landlords for clean energy projects.
Close Brothers Group agreed to sell its wealth management unit to private equity firm Oaktree for up to £200 million pounds.
Accounting firm Grant Thorton's US business is bidding against private equity firms to buy out its UK business.

$PYPL 🐻 Bears are like: "PayPal is dead. It will not 'shock the world.'"

PayPal just since August:

🟢 Partners with Adyen.
🟢 Partners with Fiserv.
🟢 Partners with Shopify.
🟢 Partners with Amazon.
🟢 Launches Fastlane, a premier guest checkout solution.
🟢 First ever… pic.twitter.com/gDDyEkwZ6d
— Crossroads (@Kross_Roads) September 19, 2024

Legacy platforms are going to keep doing this because stablecoin customers are a great catch. They're happy with 0% interest, and since due diligence isn’t required (yet), they allow platforms to reduce their all-in AML costs. https://t.co/aoX2EoQkQD
— John Paul Koning (@jp_koning) September 18, 2024

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