Blackstone, THL Bid Over $15 Billion for Fidelity Information Services, Reminiscent of KKR First Data Buyout for $29 BIllion

http://leverageacademy.com/blog/2010/05/12/Blacks…

Ever since the First Data buyout by KKR, the BPO industry has been a target for large cap private equity funds across the United States. The First Data deal was a $29 billion deal, and at the time, the company was largest publicly traded American electronic transaction processing company. Fiserve has an enterprise value of over $13 billion, and about $750 million in EBITDA. This gives an EV/EBITDA multiple of 17.0-18.0x, even higher the multiple paid for First Data.

Silver Lake and Warburg Pincus also recently bought IDC, Interactive Data Corp., seeing revenue growth potential in the need for market transparency across financial institutions. IDC provides reference data, markets pricing and trading infrastructure services to customers, including mutual funds, asset managers and banks. The IDC deal, a carve out from Pearson valued at $3.4 billion, would have been the largest deal this year.

According to Reuters, Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. (FIS) is a global provider of banking and payments technology solutions, processing services and information-based services. It offer financial institution core processing, card issuer and transaction processing services, including the NYCE Network, a national electronic funds transfer (EFT) network. As of December 31, 2009, FIS had more than 300 solutions serving over 14,000 financial institutions and business customers in over 100 countries spanning segments of the financial services industry. Additionally, the Company provide services to numerous retailers, through the check processing and guarantee services. The Company operates in four business segments: Financial Solutions Group (FSG), Payment Solutions Group (PSG), International Solutions Group (ISG), and Corporate and other. On October 1, 2009, FIS completed the acquisition of Metavante Technologies, Inc. (Metavante).

According to Mr. Miller of Bloomberg, " Blackstone Group LP, Thomas H. Lee Partners LP and TPG Capital are in talks to pay more than $15 billion including debt for Fidelity National Information Services Inc., said a person with knowledge of the matter, a deal that would value the company at about $32 a share.

Fidelity National Information may reach an agreement with the buyout group as soon as May 16 if talks don’t collapse, this person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. Marcia Danzeisen, a spokeswoman for Fidelity National, didn’t return a call after regular business hours yesterday.

A $15 billion deal would be about three times as big as the largest leveraged buyout since the credit markets crumbled in July 2007, showing how private-equity firms are again putting capital to work after more than a two-year drought in transactions. LBO funds worldwide have about $500 billion of unspent committed capital, according to researcher Preqin Ltd.

Private-equity firms announced about $24 billion of company takeovers so far this year, compared with $5.7 billion during the same period in 2009.

For Fidelity National Information, a Jacksonville, Florida- based payment-processing company, a deal in the $32 a share range would represent more than a 20 percent premium to the $26 closing stock price on May 5, the last day before the Wall Street Journal reported the company was in buyout talks.

Other private-equity firms have recently held talks about joining the group bidding for Fidelity National Information, said two people with knowledge of the matter. With banks preparing about $10 billion in debt financing, the private- equity group would have to put up more than $5 billion, one of the people said.

Financing Group

Bank of America Corp., Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are among the banks that have been working on financing the takeover, said other people with knowledge of the matter.

Credit-market turmoil in 2007 led banks to pull back on leveraged loans used to finance buyouts. Since July of that year, the largest LBO was that of IMS Health Inc., acquired in February for about $5 billion including debt.

Fidelity National Information had about $2.9 billion of net debt and noncontrolling interest as of March 31. With about 377 million shares outstanding as of April 30, a deal at $32 a share would value the company’s stock at $12.1 billion.

Thomas H. Lee, also known as THL Partners, already owns about 4.4 percent of Fidelity National, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Private-equity firm Warburg Pincus is the company’s largest shareholder, with about 11 percent.

Fidelity National Information processes payments and issues cards for more than 14,000 institutions globally. The company had profit of $105.9 million in 2009 on revenue of $3.77 billion.

Spokesmen for Blackstone, THL, and TPG declined to comment or didn’t immediately respond to calls seeking comment."

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