Visa to take a swipe at an IPO

Posted Jun 22nd 2007 8:00PM by Tom Taulli
Filed under: JPMorgan Chase (JPM), American Express (AXP), Bank of America (BAC), MasterCard Inc'A' (MA), Morgan Stanley (MS)

The IPO of MasterCard (NYSE: MA) has been, well, priceless.

So, it should be no surprise that rival Visa is prepping for its own public offering. In fact, today the company filed some preliminary forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission to kick-start the process.

Despite competition from American Express (NYSE: AXP), Morgan Stanley's (NYSE: MS) Discover and MasterCard, Visa is still the biggest player in the space.

However, in order to pull of its offering, Visa needs to reorganize things (such as combining with its Canadian operations). But this should be fairly straightforward.

The IPO is likely to hit the markets later in the year – and I suspect it will be a big hit. It will also be a nice payday for the consortium of banks that own the firm, such as Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).

You can check out the filing at the SEC website.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Tags: American Express, AmericanExpress, AXP, BAC, Bank of America, BankOfAmerica, JPM, JPMorgan, MA, Mastercard, Morgan Stanley, MorganStanley, MS, Visa IPO, VisaIpo