Optimal Payments may be moving to strengthen its position as the leading transaction company for online gambling sites through a purchase of Skrill.
Reports say the company is preparing a €1.1 billion bid for its competitor. Optimal Payments runs Neteller.
According to reports, Optimal Payments would fund the purchase with a €700 million cash offer, financed by a group of banks including Barclays, Montreal Bank and Deutsche Bank. The rest would be funded by the distribution of 37.5 million new shares, 23 percent of which would be distributed to investors Sentinel Group Holdings, who would take a 7.9 percent stake in the new company.
Skrill recorded corporate profits of $89 million in 2014. Optimal hopes to have the acquisition completed by the third quarter of this year.
“We are taking advantage of an exceptional opportunity to acquire a business we know very well which, combined with Optimal Payments, will be a leading U.K.-based online payments business with the essential scale necessary to be highly successful,” Dennis Jones, Optimal’s chairman, said in a press release.
