Into the gloom of the current markets comes a small sparkle of excitement: the Visa IPO. Marketwatch reports that the offering will be a blockbuster, and that its March 20 offering date is already oversubscribed.Visa, Inc., based in San Francisco, plans to offer over 400 million shares for between $37-$42. Based on the midpoint of that range, the company would raise over $15 billion.
This would be more than the market value of Visa's largest rival, Mastercard(NYSE:MA), IPO two years ago, which was $10 billion. Mastercards' shares subsequently soared 408%, according to Dealbook.
Visa currently leads marketshare with 60% of the worldwide credit market compared to Mastercard's 26% share.
Hard economic times can be great for credit card companies, since they don't own the debt. They grab a transaction fee from every purchase, and those swipes tend to happen more frequently when people are feeling cash poor.