Ayala Corp., the holding company of billionaire Jaime Zobel de Ayala and his family, will be paid 18.4 billion pesos ($318 million) for half of a company that holds a minority stake in the Philippines’ most popular mobile e-wallet, GCash.
Mitsubishi Corp., Japan’s largest trading company, agreed to pay the amount for 50% of Ayala Corp.’s wholly-owned AC Ventures, according to a filing with the Philippine Stock Exchange. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals, it added.
AC Ventures, Ayala Corp.’s investment arm for new businesses and technologies, owns 13% of Globe Fintech Innovations (Mynt), which owns the operators of GCash and mobile-based micro-lender Fuse Lending.
Mitsubishi “can help Mynt grow overseas and within its own significant Japan-based ecosystem, and in areas like cloud-based payments and new credit algorithms,” Ayala Corp. said in the filing.
The transaction follows an $800 million investment in Mynt in August by Ayala Corp. and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, valuing the fintech company at $5 billion. Ayala paid 22.9 billion pesos for 8%, raising its stake in Mynt to 13%, while Mitsubishi UFJ Financial’s MUFG Bank acquired 8%.
Mitsubishi’s investment in AC Ventures continued a partnership that started 50 years ago with Ayala Corp., the oldest Philippine conglomerate. Mitsubishi, once a key Ayala Corp. shareholder, has invested with the Philippine conglomerate in energy, industrial estates and auto dealerships.
“Mitsubishi can add meaningful value to Mynt,” Ayala Corp. CEO Cezar Consing says in the statement. “It’s all about serving better the many Filipinos that depend on GCash and Fuse.”
Mynt, backed by Alibaba’s Ant Financial, has over 94 million registered users and reported 6.7 billion pesos in net income in 2023, three times the profit booked in 2022, thanks to higher usage of its GCash mobile wallet and payment platform. Mynt contributed 2.1 billion pesos of first-half equity income to parent Globe Telecom, which is jointly owned by SingTel, Southeast Asia’s biggest telephone company, with Ayala Corp.
Ayala Corp. was started by the grandfather of Jaime Zobel de Ayala in 1834 as a distillery in Manila. The company has expanded into banking, real estate, telecommunications and energy. The family has a net worth of $2.6 billion, according to Forbes Asia’s Philippine rich list published in August.
Read the full article here
