The Monday Roundup: what we are watching this week | Dec 6th

By Gaia Lamperti

The Monday Roundup sets the scene for the week’s biggest news stories, industry deals, and upcoming events. For Prime subscribers only.

M&A

🧧 Oportun, a mission-driven provider of inclusive financial services, announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Digit, a neobanking platform that provides automated savings, investing, and banking tools, for $239 million. The acquisition reinforces Oportun’s status as a category leader in inclusive finance, expands Oportun’s A.I. and digital capabilities, and enhances offerings to provide customers with a holistic platform built to improve financial health
The View: “The acquisition will grow Oportun’s US footprint by more than 600,000 paying members, increase daily engagement, enhance funnel conversion, and create a profitable and differentiated neobanking platform with proven product / market fit.” – FT Partners, the exclusive financial and strategic advisor to Digit.

📈 Dutch financial services company Intertrust has agreed to a takeover bid by corporate services firm CSC for around $2 billion. The move follows British private equity firm CVC’s drop of a $1.8 billion bid for Intertrust. The all-cash-offer values the company’s shares at 20 euros each, a premium of around 59% on their value when it had announced the possible offer from CVC.
The View: “We conducted a fair and thorough process. CSC represented the best offer for the company.” – Shankar Iyer, CEO at Interstrust

Rebranding fever

🧊 Starting from Dec 19^th, Jack Dorsey’s FinTech Square will be known as Block to reflect the company’s ambitions in the blockchain and crypto space and its expansion form its original card reader business. The rebranding has been announced after Jack Dorsey stepped down from its CEO role at Twitter to focus on other parts of his business confirming its intention to double down on Square/Block.
The View: “Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy.” – Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square

🤓 Goldman Sachs Bank USA, the online bank, recently rebranded as Marcus by Goldman Sachs in an attempt to get closed to its customers and to pay homage to Marcus Goldman, who founded the company in 1869. Now, after carrying our interviews with its customers, the company will be changing the name of Marcus to be “Goldman Sachs Marcus” as opposed to “Marcus by Goldman Sachs” to create a stronger brand affinity with the name. Its offering has not seen any major changes but the shift in the name and image might suggest better offering coming soon.
The View: “Only time will tell if the change allows Goldman to drive the brand differentiation it is aiming for.” – Scott Harkey, FinTech Contributor at Forbes

Where’s the buzz

Brazil’s Nubank has slashed the targeted price range for its US stock market IPO to roughly $40 billion, following the recent global sell-off in technology stocks The company has already earlier aimed for an IPO valuation of more than $50 billion on the back of a record-breaking boom in U.S. capital markets. Affiliates of Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, SoftBank Latin America Funds, Dragoneer, TCV, Sands Capital, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are expected to anchor the IPO and buy shares worth at least $1.3 billion, Nubank said.