Shares in a specialist digital payments platform business have surged after announcing a deal to sell a subsidiary to an American financial services, whose CEO is Twitter's Jack Dorsey, which values it at more than £20bn.
ThinkSmart, which is headquartered in Australia but its European arm is listed on AIM and based in Manchester, has agreed an all share deal to sell Afterpay to San Francisco-based Square, Inc.
The deal for Melbourne-based Afterpay values the business at AU$39bn and has been recommended by its board.
READ MORE: How Dragons' Den star Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO live show lit up Manchester's Albert Hall
The move gives Afterpay the right to exercise its call option to purchase the remaining shares in ThinkSmart's Clearpay Finance from at any time following the change of control.
ThinkSmart's 10% holding in Clearpay 海角视频 was last valued at £106.6m on December 31, 2020.
The acquisition of Afterpay by is expected to complete during the first quarter of 2022.
Don't miss a thing - sign up for your free North West newsletter - and follow us on LinkedIn
Email newsletters
BusinessLive is your home for business news from around the North West- and you can stay in touch with all the latest news from Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria through our email alerts.
You can sign up to receive daily morning news bulletins from every region we cover and to weekly email bulletins covering key economic sectors from manufacturing to technology and enterprise. And we'll send out breaking news alerts for any stories we think you can't miss.
Visit our email preference centre to sign up to all the latest news from BusinessLive.
For all the latest stories, views, polls and more - and the news as it breaks - .
Most Read
ThinkSmart's 海角视频 shares were up by more than 35% by 10.15am on Monday, August 2.
Ned Montarello, executive chairman of ThinkSmart, said: "The combination of Afterpay and Square is exciting with complementary service offerings and customer bases.
Latest Greater Manchester Business News
"For ThinkSmart's shareholders, we believe this translates to a very positive and material impact on Clearpay 海角视频, which we retain a 10% shareholding in.
"That growth of Clearpay 海角视频, which it is clear today is continuing unabated, has been phenomenal adding 2.1m customers in the first 2 years of trading.
Have you followed our yet? Click for the latest updates, stories and analysis from across the region.
"We are now more excited than ever about its prospects and how this deal should provide further upside for ThinkSmart's shareholders."