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The digital payments provider on underpenetrated markets which are seeing an acceleration in digital payment adoption and are also supported by GDP dynamics such as fast-growing populations and large consumer spending pools, including the UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya. It operates through two key business divisions, namely merchant services (providing services that allow 150,000 merchants to accept digital payments from consumers) and outsourced payment services. Brookfield has affirmed its intention to build on this strategy by leveraging Network’s ‘diversified and long-standing customer base’ and combining this with Magnati Sole Proprietorship LLC (a payments company also operating in the UAE and partly owned by Brookfield). Canadian asset management fund Brookfield believes that this partnership would ‘create a key platform in the attractive MEA payments space at scale, best positioned to provide a full suite of offerings, further strengthen unit economics and deliver significant synergy opportunities, while creating avenues of sustainable growth.’ 

Anjun Ranjan, President of Brookfield’s Private Equity Group, on the offer, stating: 

‘Network is a leading payments business across the Middle East and other high-growth geographies that has built a strong industry position. We have followed the company for some time and share the team's vision to build on that strong position by growing its offering to clients. With a long history of partnerships across the Middle East, Brookfield is a strategic partner with the track record of owning and operating mission-critical businesses, deep global technology expertise, and a history of building value through operational improvements to help Network realise its full potential.’ 

The £2.2bn transaction is the second multi-billion deal this month, following EQT’s £4.4bn offer for Dechra Pharmaceuticals plc on 2 June 2023. Market Tracker data shows that public to private transaction (P2P) aggregate deal value since the start of 2023 currently stands at £9.77bn* (up from £8.52bn in the same period in 2022**). The recent uptick of multi-billion P2P transactions indicates a renewed appetite for private equity (PE) deal activity, in accordance with trends predicted in Market Tracker’s . Simon Allport, Partner in Bird & Bird’s International Corporate Group, commented: 

‘Although this year’s statistics suggest PE activity is on the wane, we think this more likely to be a reaction to the geopolitical risk rather than a real trend. We believe there are still likely to be attractive opportunities in the public markets for PE investors in the coming year and the need to ensure their capital is deployed is likely to result in a bounce back in the number of PE-backed bids.’  

Trends surrounding public to private transactions and private equity-backed bidders will be explored in more detail in our upcoming H1 2023 Public M&A trend report. 

* 1 January 2023 to 14 June 2023

** 1 January 2022 to 14 June 2022