FinTech Futures: Top five news stories of the week – 2 August 2024
Here’s our pick of five of the top news stories from the world of fintech this week, featuring Renasant Corporation, Stripe, ING and more.
Mississippi’s Renasant Corporation to buy The First Bancshares in $1.2bn all-stock deal
Renasant set to acquire The First Bancshares
Mississippi, US-based lender Renasant Corporation is set to acquire smaller regional rival The First Bancshares (The First), the parent company of The First Bank, in an all-stock deal valued at around $1.2 billion.
Renasant says the merger will establish “a six-state Southeastern banking franchise” with approximately $25 billion in total assets, $21 billion in deposits, and $18 billion in loans.
Founded in 1996, The First operates 111 branches across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Renasant Corporation is the parent of Renasant Bank, a 120-year-old financial services institution. The company says it currently operates “185 banking, lending, mortgage and wealth management offices in Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina”.
The acquisition is expected to close in H1 2025 pending customary closing conditions.
Stripe buys US paytech start-up Lemon Squeezy
Lemon Squeezy, a US-based start-up offering a payments platform for software companies, has been acquired by Stripe for an undisclosed sum.
The deal marks the 14th acquisition made by Stripe since its inception in 2010, and arrives just over a year since it snapped up engineering analytics start-up Okay.
Founded in 2020 and launched publicly a year later, Lemon Squeezy operates as a merchant of record and offers software companies tools to automate functions like sales tax compliance, payments, subscriptions, billing, licence management, email marketing and fraud prevention, among other things.
The start-up claims to have surpassed $1 million in annual recurring revenue within nine months of its launch and has maintained a partnership with Stripe for payments processing since its inception.
ING names Daniele Tonella as new CTO
Daniele Tonella named new ING CTO (Image: LinkedIn)
Dutch banking giant ING has appointed former UniCredit exec Daniele Tonella as its new CTO and the latest member of its management board for banking, effective 5 August 2024.
Tonella will take over the position from Marnix van Stiphout, ING’s chief operations officer and chief transformation officer, who took on the role on an interim basis last November following the departure of Görkem Köseoğlu, who left the bank shortly after his promotion to CTO to start his own fintech, Prometa.AI.
Between 2017 and 2021, Tonella held several leadership roles at Italy’s UniCredit, beginning as the group’s chief information officer, before advancing to digital and information officer, and ultimately serving as CEO of UniCredit Services.
WesBanco snaps up Ohio’s Premier Financial in $959m all-stock deal
West Virginia, US-based bank WesBanco has entered into a definitive agreement to merge with Ohio-based Premier Financial Corp, the holding company of Premier Bank, in a move that will make the combined entity the 8th largest bank in Ohio based on deposit market share.
The all-stock transaction is anticipated to finalise in Q1 2025 with an aggregate merger value of around $959 million.
The combined entity will boast “approximately $27 billion in assets, significant economies of scale, and strong pro forma profitability metrics”, according to WesBanco.
Once the deal is completed, WesBanco, established in 1870, will operate over 250 financial centres, an increase of 73. The bank will also maintain loan production offices across nine states, with an expanded presence in southern Michigan and north-eastern Indiana.
NatWest to acquire £2.5bn in prime UK residential mortgages from Metro Bank
NatWest to acquire UK mortgages from Metro Bank
British bank NatWest has entered into an agreement to acquire a portfolio of prime UK residential mortgages worth £2.5 billion from high-street lender Metro Bank.
The transaction is expected to close in H2 2024, subject to the approval of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
Once completed, the deal will see NatWest welcome 10,000 new customer accounts, which Metro Bank will continue to service, with an average loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of 62%.
Paul Thwaite, CEO of NatWest Group, describes the transaction as “a further opportunity to accelerate the growth of our retail mortgage book within our existing risk appetite”, and expects the deal to deliver “attractive returns”.
