Latham & Watkins is advising Blackstone and CVC Capital Partners in their £2.9bn preliminary proposal takeover bid for UK online payment company Paysafe.
The FTSE 250 company, which is based on the Isle of Mann, was advised by a Hogan Lovells team led by corporate partner Maegen Morrison with support from corporate partners Don McGown and John Connell.
It announced on Friday it was considering a possible cash offer of 590p per share from a consortium of funds managed by the two private equity heavyweights.
Paysafe offers a prepaid payment method for payments online without a bank account or credit card. It has developed more than 200 payment systems in over 40 currencies. These include digital wallets services which allow account holders to withdraw funds and make payments across 200 countries.
Latham London corporate partners David Walker, Kim Ihenacho and Richard Butterwick are working on the deal for the consortium, which has until 18 August to make a firm offer or withdraw its bid.
Paysafe, which employs more than 2,200 staff in 12 offices in Europe, North America and India, previously rejected a number of indicative offers from the consortium since early May. The company’s shares soared by 8% at the announcement on 21 July.
The payments industry is undergoing a period of consolidation, as people increasingly switch from cash to electronic payment.
In July, US payment group Vantiv purchased British rival Worldpay for £9.1bn and Ingienico acquired Swedish Bambora from Nordic Capital for a total consideration of €1.5 billion.
Hogan Lovells has a long-standing relationship with Paysafe and acted for it in relation to its €1.1bn acquisition of online payment provider Skrill Group from CVC in 2015.
This article first appeared on The Lex 100‘s sister publication, Legal Business.