Not many have noticed. But under the direction of the CDP an Italian freshman risks becoming the European leader of electronic payment systems. We are talking about nexi, specializes not only on the digital payment front, but also active on the investment, legal consultancy and outsourcing services front which, by 11 November, could complete the acquisition of the Danish Nets, a leading payments company in the northern Europe valued at 7,2 billion euros (including 1,8 billion in debt) and thus stand up to the French leader Worldline, which has just tied the knot with Ingenico.
Will a card-to-card transaction that will allow CDP to acquire control of the company together with Hellman & Fridman, today the main shareholder of Nets with 54% (which will be diluted to 16%), will participate in the governance of the new group by entering the future Board of Directors together with Bain and Advent (formerly members of Nexi and present on the board). A company of excellent partners whose leading role will be with CDP because no one individually will have more than CDP.
Nexi thus confirms itself as a kind of hare in Piazza Affari where it landed in April 2019 with the aim of becoming a point of reference in digital payments in Italy. Mission accomplished with the wedding with Sia, the subsidiary of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. But even earlier, under the impetus of Mercury (the vehicle owned by the funds of Advent International, Bain Capital and Clessidra which will leave the scene when Cdp exercises the option), there had been the corporate restructuring which culminated in the split between the services aimed at banking sector and those related to digital payments, the first protagonists of the revolution.
An integrated group will be born from the union between the Italian and Danish giants, which has already estimated 150 million in cost synergies, without prejudicing people, given that the two companies are complementary. And so CEO Paolo Bertoluzzo, together with the accounts for the first nine months and in anticipation of a turbulent period for the economy, was awarded 10 days to thoroughly study the accounts of the Danish group and bring home a strategic operation which involves all the shareholders of Nexi, Sia and Nets.
It so happens that the operation almost coincides in time with another challenge, much more complicated and ambitious, to the hegemony of the banks put into crisis by the advance of digital technology. However, it has been blocked for now. In fact, on Thursday 5 November, in Shanghai and Hong Kong, it should have debuted on the price list Ant Group, the digital payments company whose initial capitalization would be around 316 billion dollars. That is to say a vital threat to the banks, brought to its knees by the latest creature of Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba who gave birth to a machine that has 640 million customers who deposit, make loans and buy mortgages and pension funds, or in practice act as a bank at lower costs and red tape.
And the reaction was not long in coming: the authorities of China, summoned the president and first partner, Jack Ma, on Monday, for what in the press release released jointly by the People Bank of China and by three other financial market regulators, they defined as an interview. Then, it also came the ax of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which announced the decision to postpone the IPO.
Even before the decision to stop the IPO, the Financial Times had written that the reaction of the Chinese authorities was nothing more than a warning. The lecture is due to the fact that earlier last month, speaking at an event held in Shanghai, Ma explicitly criticized the state structure of financial risk management. Tonight, China's central bank and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission released a document on the new micro credit management rules provided directly to consumers, directly, or indirectly, in association with a commercial bank. A limit to the amount payable has been introduced, plus an increase in supervision on a phenomenon that is rapidly increasing: Ant Group offers itself to commercial banks as a third party capable of managing the relationship with the end customer.
In short, the banking lobby does not forgive either in the East or in the West.
