Warburg Pincus has agreed to buy Leumi Card from Bank Leumi and Azrieli Group in a deal valued at NIS 2.5bn ($684m).
The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank Leumi and provides credit card services in Israel. Since its launch in 2000, the business has issued 2 million credit cards worldwide and supports more than 40,000 businesses with its clearing services.
Bank Leumi is expected to receive an after-tax profit of NIS 234m ($63.8m) as well as an additional amount up to NIS 273m through an agreement with the business.
Warburg has said it will expand the business’ activity with the bank and will offer the bank’s subsidiary – Leumi Partners, the option to acquire up to 20% of the corporation,
Warburg managing director and head of Europe Daniel Zilberman, said “We are excited to partner with Leumi Card in the next phase of the company’s growth. The Israeli payments, consumer finance and SME lending markets present considerable opportunity, and we look forward to working closely with chief executive officer Ron Fainaro and his talented management team.”
Warburg has made a number of investments in FinTech, with it recently being among the firms to contribute to Ant Financial’s earth-shattering $14bn Series C.
Other deals in the space include a contribution to the $44m Series C of behaviour analysis and solution Sensors Data, a lead investment in the $88m Series D of revenue management company Duetto, and the purchase of a 55 per cent stake in financial technology developer Fiserv.
The global buyout house’s oversubscribed twelfth fund also closed significantly above its $12bn hard cap.
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