Published
- 06:00 am
Today MoneyGram and Ant Financial Services Group today reported that the companies have entered into an amendment to the definitive agreement under which MoneyGram will merge with Ant Financial. Pursuant to the amendment, Ant Financial increased the offer price to acquire all of the outstanding shares of MoneyGram from $13.25 per share to $18.00 per share in cash. The MoneyGram board of directors has unanimously approved the Amended Merger Agreement.
The offer price of $18.00 per share provides approximately $320 million in additional cash consideration to MoneyGram stockholders from the prior agreement. The per share consideration represents a premium of approximately 64 percent to MoneyGram's volume weighted average share price over the prior three month period ended January 25, 2017, the day prior to the original transaction announced with Ant Financial. The transaction is valued at approximately $1,204 million for all of MoneyGram's common and preferred shares on a fully diluted basis. Ant Financial will assume or refinance MoneyGram's outstanding debt.
Pamela Patsley, Executive Chairman of MoneyGram, said, "Throughout this process, our board of directors has remained laser-focused on maximizing value for MoneyGram stockholders, while taking into account price, the ability to complete a transaction and other important considerations. We are pleased to offer even more value to our stockholders through the amendment of our merger agreement with Ant Financial. We continue to be excited about the transaction, which we are confident will provide substantial benefits to all of our stakeholders, including stockholders, customers, agents and employees."
Alex Holmes, Chief Executive Officer of MoneyGram, added, "As I have stated previously, we believe this transaction will significantly benefit consumers throughout the world who depend on innovative and reliable financial connections to friends and family. We share Ant Financial's commitment to successfully completing the transaction, which will allow us to grow our business, making money transfers easier for customers and providing a wider selection of services for the agents who serve them around the world."
Doug Feagin, President of Ant Financial International, said, "We look forward to joining forces with MoneyGram, which will add valuable cross-border remittance capabilities to the Ant Financial ecosystem, serving our more than 630 million users globally. Over the past few months, we have enjoyed working closely with the MoneyGram team and remain committed to our plans to invest further in the MoneyGram business. We plan to grow the U.S.-based team and create even greater opportunities for the MoneyGram community as we pursue our shared vision of global inclusive finance in an increasingly digital era."
Mr. Feagin continued, "We are fully committed to maintaining the MoneyGram brand that has earned the trust of millions of customers. As part of Ant Financial, MoneyGram will have access to resources to further enhance its technology, systems and anti-money laundering and compliance programs."
Following the completion of the transaction, MoneyGram will operate as an independent subsidiary of Ant Financial and retain its brand, management team, IT infrastructure and headquarters in Dallas, Texas. All of MoneyGram's current procedures and protections related to data security and personally identifiable information will remain intact.
MoneyGram and Ant Financial have already made significant progress towards obtaining the regulatory approvals necessary to complete the transaction, including obtaining antitrust clearance in the United States and filing for certain state licensing approvals. The transaction is subject to the approval of MoneyGram stockholders, obtaining remaining regulatory approvals, including the clearance of the transaction by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and other customary closing conditions. The transaction continues to be expected to close in the second half of 2017. The transaction is not subject to any financing conditions.
MoneyGram stockholders of record as of April 7, 2017 will be asked to vote on the Amended Merger Agreement at a special meeting of the stockholders of MoneyGram scheduled for May 16, 2017. Thomas H. Lee Partners and certain MoneyGram executives who collectively own approximately 46 percent of the outstanding voting shares of MoneyGram previously entered into agreements with MoneyGram to vote in favor of the transaction, which agreements remain in effect following entry into the Amended Merger Agreement. The MoneyGram board of directors recommends that MoneyGram stockholders vote "for" the Amended Merger Agreement at the special meeting.
On April 14, 2017, MoneyGram received a binding offer from Euronet Worldwide, Inc. ("Euronet") (NASDAQ: EEFT) to acquire all of the outstanding shares of MoneyGram Common Stock and Preferred Stock (on an as-converted basis) for $15.20 per share in cash. Upon receipt of Ant Financial's increased offer on April 15, 2017, MoneyGram's board of directors, after careful review and consideration in consultation with its outside legal and financial advisors, compared the relative merits of the increased offer reflected in the Amended Merger Agreement with Ant Financial to the binding offer from Euronet and unanimously determined that the Euronet proposal was not superior to the Amended Merger Agreement and that entering into the Amended Merger Agreement was in the best interests of MoneyGram stockholders.
Simon Kavanagh
Lifecare Chief Designer at Tieto
The status quo of siloed data storage is unsustainable and the time to act is now. see more
- 09:00 am
Today ZeroStack, the leading provider of making self-driving private cloud and Nexenta, the global leader in Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage (OpenSDS) announced a joint solution that integrates ZeroStack’s Intelligent Cloud Platform with Nexenta’s storage systems to create a pre-tested, completely automated, and fully supported converged private cloud solution. With this solution, enterprises and managed service providers can now leverage Nexenta’s industry-first hardware and protocol-agnostic Software-Defined Storage (SDS) portfolio, delivering complete freedom from storage hardware vendor lock-in, to build a highly resilient and high performing cloud for application development, running packaged enterprise applications and hosting.
The combined ZeroStack/Nexenta solution offers these unique advantages:
- Nexenta users can simply plug their storage devices into the ZeroStack Intelligent Cloud Platform via Nexenta’s REST API technology to access existing storage resources in a self-driving, on-premises cloud.
- Nexenta provides a multi-site disaster recovery solution that can back up ZeroStack cloud data.
“ZeroStack makes on-premises cloud simple and affordable, and this solution allows our customers to combine Nexenta solutions with the ZeroStack platform,” said Tarkan Maner, Chairman & CEO at Nexenta. “Our OpenSDS solutions give customers the storage agility they need, and ZeroStack’s cloud platform extends storage into the cloud for self-service use on a self-healing infrastructure.”
Both Nexenta and ZeroStack will market the solution to their customers and resellers. With this combined solution, Nexenta and ZeroStack resellers can offer their customers strategic advice on cloud and storage options while retaining customers who might otherwise have no choice but move to a public cloud provider.
“Nexenta has a unique storage solution for enterprises that want high performance and scalability,” said Ajay Gulati, CEO and Co-Founder at ZeroStack. “By combining our products into a single converged solution, we give our customers the fastest, most reliable access to data in a turnkey on-premises cloud solution.”
- 08:00 am
Euroclear, a trusted provider of post-trade services, and Paxos, a financial technology firm providing pioneering blockchain solutions, are delighted to announce the successful completion of their second pilot for Euroclear Bankchain, the new blockchain settlement service for London bullion due to go live this year.
The first pilot program took place in December 2016 with over 600 OTC test bullion trades settled on the Euroclear Bankchain platform over the course of two-weeks. The pilot was coordinated through the Euroclear Bankchain Market Advisory Group that includes participants working with Euroclear and Paxos in the roll-out of the new service.
"It has been exciting to watch the growth of the Euroclear Bankchain pilot program over the last month," says Seth Phillips, Bankchain Product Director at Paxos. "We doubled the number of firms and significantly increased interaction as participants were spread across six countries and four time zones. Most importantly, we're proving that the platform can deliver lower costs and lower risk for the London gold market."
Angus Scott, Head of Product Strategy and Innovation at Euroclear says: "We are encouraged by the extensive engagement of market participants in this second pilot and will continue as we further develop this new market infrastructure for the bullion market. The feedback provided is of great importance to make sure that our service will deliver real added value to the London bullion market through transparency, capital reduction and delivery versus payment settlement."
Both Euroclear and Paxos have continued to work closely with the London bullion market executing successful pilots to test and obtain feedback on the Euroclear Bankchain service. Paxos and Euroclear are on schedule for a production launch later in 2017 for the Euroclear Bankchain service.
- 01:00 am
Today INTESA SANPAOLO, a leader in banking industry in Europe, and EBA CLEARING have reported the successful execution of the first user testing activities for the Pan-European real-time payment platform of EBA CLEARING.
Starting from November 2017, account-servicing payment service providers (AS-PSPs) from all over SEPA will be able to use this highly flexible solution for payment products in euro that are fully compliant with the European Payments Council’s SCT Inst Scheme and in line with the ISO 20022 global messaging standards for real-time payments.
Mr. Stefano Favale, Head of Global Transaction Banking at INTESA SANPAOLO Group commented: “We are strongly committed to playing a leading role in the future of payments for the benefit of our customers. Both retail and corporate customers will be able to send credit transfers in real time across Europe, potentially reaching over 500 million European citizens and companies in a seamless way - and they will need nothing aside from their current account to do so. The end-to-end process between the originator and beneficiary accounts will take no more than 10 seconds. The payments will be irrevocable and settled in real time subject to pre-funding in central bank funds.”
Mr. Enrico Bagnasco, Head of IT at INTESA SANPAOLO added: “We have successfully started user testing for our November connection to this instant payment system thanks to our upgraded payment hub. We have been significantly investing in our payment architecture and applications over the past few years, in order to be more and more innovative and agile and to be able to take advantage of the new opportunities arising in this business,” while Mr. Luca Faussone Head of Operations commented: “24/7/365 system performance will require a new operations model and approach and we are making it a top priority to deliver this enhanced service level for our customers.”
Mr. Hays Littlejohn, CEO of EBA CLEARING, said: “Intesa Sanpaolo is the first future participant to connect directly to our test system and is amongst the 25 users currently preparing to go live this year. Together with those institutions that are planning to connect to the system in 2018, these early joiners represent nearly 85% of the SEPA Credit Transfer traffic processed by our STEP2 system today. More and more banks and service providers are developing services around our new platform, and we are confident that we will see a positive evolution of the reach of the service from the start of the ramp-up period on.”
- 08:00 am
Diasoft is named as the General Partner of the VI Annual Financial Sphere Award for the section "Banks and Payment Services". The company submitted a large-scale project for implementation of its FLEXTERA BI for automation of regulatory reporting in VTB24. At the award ceremony, which took place on 30 March 2017 in Moscow, VTB24 and Diasoft's project was named one of three best implementations in the category "Reporting Solutions".
The goal of the project for implementation of FLEXTERA BI for regulatory reporting in VTB24 was to establish a new approach to calculation of the credit risk based on internal ratings for evaluation of the capital adequacy and to support regulatory and tax reporting, taking into account implementation of a new IT solution for management of legal entities. Within the project scope, Diasoft implemented more than 20 regulatory report forms, tax accounting registers for income tax, transfer pricing and VAT. The joint efforts of the partners allowed them to achieve significant results: thanks to the implemented solution, the level of data quality reached 99.8%.
Svetlana Yemelyanova, Accountant General, Deputy Head of Financial Department at VTB24, said"For me, as a customer of regulatory and tax reporting, this project means the ability to quicker introduce new products and serve customers, to accelerate the end-of-day process and report generation, and to adapt to changing banking and tax regulations more flexibly. During the project, the Diasoft team demonstrated its high professional level. The receipt of the award in the category "Reporting Solutions" became a well-deserved victory for all of us. We want to thank the expert community for generous appraisal of our work on this important project".
Alexander Gentsis, Member of the Board of Directors at Diasoft, who accepted the award on behalf of Diasoft, commented, "The project at VTB24 was new and important for Diasoft, both from the point of view of its scope and peculiarities of the methodological support. We had to go deep into detail of the bank's processes to ensure the required results. Today, regulatory reporting to the Central bank is an important task of any bank. That is why the professional community marks such projects with prestigious awards in a special category. We are happy to contribute to the development of the banking industry and hope for further successful cooperation with VTB 24".
This award has contributed once again to the list of accolades won by FLEXTERA BI. During the recent years, FLEXTERA BI won a lot of contracts for implementation of IT solutions for reporting in banks from the TOP50, which proves high popularity of the solution at the market of regulatory reporting systems.
- 07:00 am
Our ability to allow users to receive any percentage of their wage in Bitcoin from any company has made us incredibly popular among users in the US and those receiving wages from US companies. Unlike the US, where workers typically have the ability to split their payroll into two accounts at the payroll provider level, workers in the EU receive their entire wage into a single bank account. Last year, we launched the ability to split your payroll directly on our platform, so that you could receive your entire wage through Bitwage and split between digital currencies and local currencies, such as Euro, USD or BRL.
Since receiving a grant from BPIFrance and moving half of our team across the world to Paris as winners of the French Tech Ticket, we have been hard at work looking to expand throughout Europe and improve our European solutions.
This is why we are happy to announce the launch of unique IBAN numbers for all users receiving wages in the EU. Now EU users have the first real option for a direct deposit into any wallet of their choice.
We are able to offer this through a new banking partnership we’ve made over the past few months. What does this mean for our EU users? Two major upgrades:
-Real-Time Transaction Viewing: All users receiving wages from EU companies will be able to see exactly when funds have been received by Bitwage. No longer wait for when Bitwage processes payrolls to know whether funds have been received.
-No Deposit Claims Required: Previously, when Bitwage received wages with ambiguous information on the description of the deposit, the funds would go through a claims process that requires the user to upload information that would prove the funds belonged to them. With our new unique IBANs, users receiving wages for EU companies no longer need to create deposit claims, as payment descriptions are no longer required for these transactions.
All Bitwage Premium will automatically be provided with these unique numbers. All users with monthly transaction volumes over 1,999 Euro may request unique EU IBANs as well.
- 06:00 am
Today Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) announced its progress across a range of far-reaching capital market reforms to enhance efficiency, corporate governance, and transparency. The reforms are part of the Exchange's efforts to further align Saudi capital market with international standards and make it more attractive to both domestic and foreign investors.
"It is vitally important that Tadawul's market participants, both domestic and foreign, have access to a transparent and exceptional trade environment that conforms to the highest international standards," said Khalid Abdullah Al Hussan, Chief Executive Officer of Tadawul. "We have aggressively moved forward with a number of initiatives to strengthen corporate governance, improve investor relations capabilities of Saudi corporates, and bring Saudi Arabia's trade settlement cycle into line with standard practice in a number of developed markets." Tadawul has implemented a number of significant changes, many of which are set to go into effect by the close of Q2 2017.
Adoption of new corporate governance rules issued by the Saudi Capital Markets Authority (CMA) in February. The rules enhance the rights of shareholders and board members and provide greater clarity and more transparency around determining commercial strategic planning, and roles, responsibilities and oversight of corporate entities and third parties.
Adoption of the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) which enhances comparability of corporates across markets and enables easier analysis of sector performance. The standard was formally adopted in January.
Investor relations training for Tadawul's 24 corporates with the most international exposure and liquidity, to be conducted from mid-April through mid-May. The program will enhance transparency and disclosure and enhance investor relations capabilities within Saudi listed companies. Amending the settlement cycle to T+2 for all listed securities to increase the level of asset safety for investors and to unify the settlement duration for all types of listed securities across most international markets. The changes will go into effect on Sunday, April, 23 2017.
Enabling foreign participation in Saudi IPOs. Through the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Qualified Foreign Investor (QFI) program, registered QFIs will be able to participate in domestic IPOs.
Introduction of Nomu, a parallel equity market for Qualified Investors that offers lighter listing requirements and serves as an alternative platform for companies to go public.
Enhancements to the Independent Custody Model which enable custodians to reject the settlement of unconfirmed trades executed by the executing brokers.
Introduction of a Delivery versus Payment Model (DvP) to comply with the principle of DvP, wherein the delivery of securities occurs only if the corresponding payment occurs.
Introduction of securities borrowing and lending and covered short-selling. Dropping the Exchange requirement of cash prefunding for specific investors, and leave the timing of cash availability to the contractual terms between Authorized Person and the investor, which will align trading practice with good international standards, and standardize institutional investors' trading processes especially investment funds.
The reforms undertaken by Tadawul play an important role in the development of the Saudi capital market and reinforce the Exchange's active role in supporting the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's (KSA) Vision 2030 plan and efforts to diversify the Kingdom's reliance on oil and make its equity market more attractive to foreign investors. Since opening the markets to QFIs in June 2015 and introducing updates to the program in August of last year, Tadawul has registered a total of 56 international financial institutions.
The reforms and outreach to investors are also helping Tadawul prepare for anticipated inclusion in emerging market indices such as Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI).
Continued Al Hussan: "As part of the Kingdom's efforts to achieve Emerging Markets status and demonstrate genuine engagement with institutions, Tadawul has conducted three roadshows to date in the U.S., Europe and Asia with more than 250 participating investors, which together represent at least USD $18.05 Trillion in investable assets. Based on the positive feedback and interest received to date, we hope to see a continued rise in QFI applications and registrations through year end."
- 06:00 am
Today the Vietnamese mobile operator Mobifone and the mobile payments company Fortumo announced the launch of carrier billing on Google Play. Over 25 million Mobifone subscribers can now purchase apps and in-app content from the app store by charging payments to their phone bill.
Carrier billing significantly increases the amount of people in Vietnam who can make online payments. This is because only 2% of the population has credit cards while carrier billing is available to any phone owner. Today, more than 40% of Vietnamese already own a smartphone with the growth accelerating. Additional information on the Vietnamese mobile ecosystem can be found from Fortumo’s Asia market report.
“Vietnam is one of the leading countries by economic growth in Asia today, which means a huge number of people coming online and consuming content on their smartphones. We are excited to partner with Mobifone in helping them partake in this growth and delivering to them the Google Play billing solution in such a short timeframe,” said Gerri Kodres, Chief Business Officer at Fortumo. Mobifone is the third Vietnamese mobile operator to launch Google Play in Vietnam by using Fortumo as its integration partner, as the company already works together with Viettel and Vietnamobile.
Thanks to partnering with Fortumo, Mobifone will also get access to Fortumo Insight, the company’s sophisticated data analytics platform which helps carriers see the main business KPIs and analyze their revenue from app stores. Fortumo Insight also enables carriers to track subscriber payment behavior and make improvements based on actual results.
In addition to Google Play, Fortumo works with digital media providers including Spotify, Sony, HOOQ, Gaana and gaming companies like EA Mobile, Gameloft, Kinguin and Rovio. Merchants using Fortumo’s platform can collect payments from subscribers of more than 350 mobile operators through one integration.
- 03:00 am
Today Assetz Capital, one of the UK’s largest and fastest growing peer-to-peer finance platforms, revealed it was raising the interest rate on its popular 30 Day Access Account (30DAA) by 0.5% to 4.75% for a limited time. The 30DAA allows peer-to-peer lenders to invest automatically in loans and features automatic diversification to spread risk.
Investors will have until midday on 11 May to take advantage of the new rate and will benefit from a capped return of 4.75% for up to 90 days after an investment is made. After this, the account will return to its original rate of 4.25%. The increase marks the first time one of the major P2P players has raised the interest rate on a core account in 2017.
Stuart Law, CEO of Assetz Capital commented: “The 30 Day Access Account has been very popular since its introduction nearly a year ago. Recently Assetz Capital has experienced particularly strong growth in borrower demand as a business and has flourished whilst many other platforms have struggled, which has led to some of them dropping rates on their key accounts.”
The 30DAA invests in both short and long-term loans and interest is earned and paid monthly. The account always retains substantial cash balances in order to facilitate quick access in normal market conditions for investors who require their investment back on the 30 days’ notice, although access times cannot be guaranteed.
Investors can automatically invest any amount from £1 in a diverse portfolio of secured business loans that have passed Assetz Capital’s strict credit checks.
Stuart Law concluded: “The 30 Day Access Account opens up the world of P2P lending to new investors who want the chance to earn a fair return, but also have a degree of liquidity on their invested capital in normal market conditions. The account is already a hugely popular and competitive choice in the P2P market and we’re expecting to see a sharp increase in lenders who take up this attractive limited time offer.”
