FinTech Futures: Top five news stories of the week – 17 May 2024
Here’s our pick of five of the top news stories from the world of finance and tech this week, featuring Deutsche Bank, Lemonway, Lydia and more.
BBVA makes $13bn hostile takeover bid for Banco Sabadell
BBVA has presented a takeover offer to Banco Sabadell’s shareholders
The board of directors at Spanish banking giant BBVA has presented a purchase offer to Banco Sabadell’s shareholders for 50.01% of the company, after Sabadell’s board of directors had rejected an offer on the same financial terms early last week.
The deal would see Banco Sabadell’s shareholders receive an exchange ratio of one newly-issued BBVA share for every 4.83 Sabadell share, at a premium of 30% over 29 April closing prices, resulting in a transaction total of over $13 billion.
The proposed deal hinges upon the approval of Banco Sabadell’s shareholders and the endorsement of regulatory bodies such as the Spanish Market and Competition Regulator (CNMC) and the UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority.
BBVA says that the proposed move would create “one of the best banks in Europe”, boasting a Spanish loan market share of nearly 22%.
President’s Choice Financial taps Temenos for retail core banking solution
President’s Choice Financial (PC Financial), the financial division of Loblaw Companies Limited, a Canadian food and pharmacy retailer, has partnered with Temenos as it looks to grow its banking business and offer more financial products for consumers.
PC Financial is set to integrate Temenos’ retail core banking solution as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) on Microsoft Azure, which Temenos says will enable the firm to “scale products faster and expand its banking proposition” on a “secure, continuously updated service”.
Furthermore, the Swiss vendor says the adoption of its tech will allow PC Financial to streamline its “end-to-end processes” while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
Deutsche Bank to explore asset tokenisation applications as part of MAS’ Project Guardian
Deutsche Bank joins MAS’ Project Guardian
Deutsche Bank has announced it has joined Project Guardian, a multi-year initiative led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to explore the application of decentralised finance (DeFi) and asset tokenisation across financial markets.
Project Guardian was launched by MAS in May 2022 and seeks to develop and pilot tokenisation use cases across its four focus areas of interoperable networks, independent trust anchors, institutional grade DeFi protocols, and the use of tokenised deposits issued by deposit-taking institutions on public blockchains.
As its latest supporter, Deutsche Bank will contribute to the project’s asset and wealth management workstream, and says it intends to “test an open architecture and interoperable blockchain platform to service tokenised and digital funds”, while also working to propose new protocol standards and best practices.
French paytech Lemonway appoints new CTO and CFO
Lemonway, a payment services provider based in France, has made two new appointments to its finance and technology units to “strengthen its management committee”.
Céline Bayer and Nicolas Vigier are the latest additions to the firm’s c-suite, joining as CTO and CFO respectively.
Bayer has been tasked with automating and scaling Lemonway’s “internal technologies and processes”, as well as enhancing customer service through the “opportunities offered by artificial intelligence”.
Meanwhile, Vigier has been brought in to manage Lemonway’s finance and HR departments, having previously served as CFO for merchant payment solution Payplug and Dalenys Payment.
Lydia launches digital banking app Sumeria
French start-up Lydia launches banking app
French fintech start-up Lydia is splitting its financial services app into two and launching a new digital banking brand called Sumeria, into which it plans to invest over €100 million and hire 400 people over the next three years.
The company’s unveiling of Sumeria comes just over a month after it announced the launch of its new app Lydia Accounts, which will support a service remit solely focused on peer-to-peer (P2P) payments.
Lydia launched in 2013 as a P2P payments app and has gradually added more financial services features over the years.
With the launches, the company will offer its P2P service separately from its digital banking proposition through the Lydia Accounts app, while the original Lydia app will now become Sumeria.
