Optimal Payments Expects FCA to Decide on the Skrill Deal by August 11

On July 31, Optimal Payments Limited claimed that they are still waiting for the UK’s regulatory body, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), to approve its reverse takeover bid of one of the key rivals, Skrill (formally Moneybookers). Optimal Payments is a global provider of online and mobile payment processing services and the operator of popular online payment service NETELLER.

Earlier in March, Optimal Payments proposed to acquire Skrill Group from CVC Funds for an estimated enterprise value of around €1.1 billion (US$ 1.2 billion). Since Skrill is one of the largest prepaid online wallet operators in Europe, acquiring its operation would enable Optimal Payments to deliver significant growth potential in one of the key geographic markets in the world.

“The acquisition of Skrill will create a global tech champion in the fast growing digital payments space and we believe represents a transformational leap forward that greatly accelerates our strategic plan,” said the initial statement in March.

However, the key advantage of this takeover for Optimal Payments would be the opportunity to scale their international operations significantly, especially in the rapidly growing “gambling sector.”

As Optimal Payments Limited is a publicly listed company in London based Alternative Investment Market (AIM), it needed the meet certain regulatory conditions prior to getting the approval from UK’s regulators to go ahead with the deal. Later in June, Optimal Payments said that they are “pleased to announce that a number of these conditions have now been or will shortly be satisfied.”

Last week, Optimal Payments said in a statement that “there are no outstanding information requests from the FCA, and the company remains confident of a positive outcome of this process.”

“Completion of the acquisition is conditional on, amongst other things, the receipt of change of control approval from the FCA, and as at the date of this announcement, the only outstanding material condition to completion is the receipt of change of control approval from the FCA,” the statement added.

Optimal Payments is now expecting the FCA to decide on the change of control issue by August 11, 2015.