CVC weighs €9bn bid for Italian payments group Nexi, FT reports

Private equity steadfast CVC is assessing a imaginable €9bn ($10.54bn) transaction for Italian payments institution Nexi, the Financial Times reported citing sources.

According to the report, CVC is considering a caller attack aft antecedently looking astatine a takeover of Nexi connected 2 occasions.

The company’s stock terms has declined by astir 65% implicit the past 4 years.

Nexi, whose biggest shareholder is buyout steadfast Hellman & Friedman, has faced unit from little fees crossed Europe’s payments sector, on with renegotiations of important contracts and contention from fintech companies.

One idiosyncratic acquainted with CVC’s reasoning told the FT that the steadfast would not determination up with an connection for Nexi — valued astatine €9bn including €6bn of indebtedness — without enactment from the Italian government.

“The contented is wholly governmental astatine this point,” they added.

Another idiosyncratic adjacent to the substance said CVC’s reappraisal remains astatine an aboriginal signifier and whitethorn not pb to a ceremonial offer.

A idiosyncratic adjacent to Hellman & Friedman told the FT that the capitalist is not successful discussions with CVC oregon banks astir a imaginable transaction, “but would respond to a bid should 1 emerge”.

Italy’s “golden power” rules, which use to strategically important assets specified arsenic banking infrastructure, let the authorities to halt a overseas takeover of Nexi.

People acquainted with the substance said the connection being examined would abstracted Nexi’s integer banking solutions portion and spot it with an Italian state-backed capitalist specified arsenic Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP).

They said the purpose of carving retired the integer banking business, the smallest of Nexi’s 3 operating divisions, would beryllium to trim the hazard of Rome utilizing its veto powers.

However, the aforesaid radical said CDP, Italy’s authorities money and Nexi’s second-largest shareholder, does not look to backmost taking the payments radical private.

Last year, Nexi turned down a €1bn connection from US backstage equity steadfast TPG for its integer banking division.

The group’s different 2 businesses are merchant solutions, which offers outgo services to in-store and online merchants, and issuing solutions, which works with fiscal institutions to contented outgo cards. Merchant solutions generated astir 60% of Nexi’s €3.6bn gross successful 2025.

Under the program being considered by CVC, Nexi would beryllium repositioned arsenic a software-focused company, the radical said.

Italian officials told the FT that their precedence was to reorganise Nexi aft a play of accelerated enlargement — including the 2020 acquisitions of Italian payments providers Sia and Nets — led to a autumn successful the company’s stock terms and weakened capitalist assurance successful what had antecedently been viewed arsenic a cash-generative model.