The global financial-services company looks to raise $10 billion for its initial public offering, according to a registration statement with the SEC.
Visa, the biggest U.S. credit card network, said in a regulatory filing on Friday that it hopes to raise $10 billion in an initial public offering.
Visa said it plans to deposit a portion of the company's proceeds from the IPO into an escrow account to pay settlements or judgments related to litigation settlements.
On Wednesday, Visa disclosed that it will pay American Express Co. up to $2.07 billion to settle a lawsuit alleging the company illegally stifled competition. Under the plan, Visa said its member banks will absorb the costs of the settlement.
Despite a turbulent week on Wall Street, which ended with a major drop on Friday, Visa's IPO is hotly anticipated by investors. Visa is following in the footsteps of rival MasterCard, which has more than quadrupled since the company went public in May at $39 a share.
As Wall Street struggles, MasterCard and Visa have secured the enviable role of processing the world's credit card payments but taking on none of the debt. The risk is instead held by the 25,000 banks in more than 200 countries that issue the cards.
On Oct. 31, MasterCard Inc. reported that third-quarter profit jumped 63 percent, far exceeding Wall Street's expectations and driving shares to an all-time high.
Visa posted net income of $771 million on operating revenue of $3.73 billion for the nine months ended June 30, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Visa did not disclose the number or expected price range of the shares it plans to offer. The company noted that the total offering price was estimated solely to calculate its registration fee and may change.
Visa also did not indicate whether any stockholders will sell shares in the IPO. The company listed JPMorgan Chase as its largest stockholder, with 23.3 percent of its Class B shares. According to the filing, Bank of America Corp. owns 11.5 percent of Visa's Class B stock and National City Corp. owns 8 percent of Class B shares.
JP Morgan Securities, Goldman Sachs, Banc of America Securities, Citigroup Global Markets, HSBC Securities, Merrill Lynch, UBS Securities and Wachovia Capital Markets are serving as the IPO's lead underwriters.
Visa made the disclosure in an S-1 filing with the SEC. Previously, Visa released the restructuring steps it would take to prepare for its IPO in S-4 filings.
The San Francisco-based company did not identify a proposed stock exchange or stock symbol in the filing.
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Saturday, November 10, 2007
Visa files for IPO
Thursday, October 18, 2007
China's market capitalisation swells to $3.37 trillion, emerges world's fourth largest
China has emerged fourth in the world in equity market capitalisation with a volume of 25.32 trillion yuan ($3.37 trillion) as of September 30 this year, accounting for about 5.7 per cent of the world's total.
A total of 1,517 companies went public on the stock markets of the mainland by the end of September, official media said.
The overall volume at Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses was around 4 trillion yuan at the end of 2002, ranking China the fourth largest in Asia, data furnished by a delegation of the central financial authorities to the ongoing communist party congress showed.
China's equity markets raised a total of 425.04 billion yuan ($56.7 billion) through initial and secondary public offers in the first nine months of this year, surpassing the combined funds from 2002 to 2006, the China Securities Journal reported.
In September alone, money raised through 15 initial public offers (IPO) amounted to 149 billion yuan, or half of the money raised through IPOs so far this year. China Shenhua, the nation's biggest coal producer, raised 66.58 billion yuan from IPO, refreshing the 58.05 billion yuan record set by the China Construction Bank.
China securities regulatory commission chairman Shang Fulin cited shareholder reform initiated in 2005 to float non-tradeable state owned shares, tighter market supervision on insider trading and the clean-up of the securities sector as factors leading to the bull run on the stock market.
He said the stock market is playing a better part acting as a barometer of china's economy.
Institutional investors control 46 per cent of the market equity, reports quoted Shang as saying.
The market was also driven by sufficient liquidity, rapid economic growth and the return of heavyweight state-owned enterprises from overseas bourses to domestic share markets.
