Covington Advises Argentinian Payments Company on Sale with Enterprise Value of $1.42B

Covington Advises Argentinian Payments Company on Sale with Enterprise Value of $1.42B

January 22, 2019

NEW YORK—Covington advised Prisma Medios de Pago, Argentina’s leading payments company, in the sale of a controlling stake to Advent International. Prisma’s existing shareholders will retain a 49% stake in the company. The transaction values 100 percent of Prisma at $1.42 billion.

Prisma is an Argentinian company established in 2014 through the merger of Visa Argentina and Banelco and brings together more than 30 years of experience in the local payments market. The company provides payment technology solutions, enabling connections between financial institutions, merchants and consumers by developing high-quality and secure solutions across the whole payments value chain.

Founded in 1984, Advent International is one of the largest and most experienced global private equity investors. Advent has been operating in Latin America for 22 years. The firm focuses on investments in five core sectors, including business and financial services; healthcare; industrial; retail, consumer and leisure; and technology, media, and telecom.

The Covington team was led by Sergio Urías, Laura Torre, and Andrew Heather (corporate), Ansgar Simon (tax), Brian Rosenzweig and Sharon Freiman (capital markets and securities), Peter Schwartz, Brent Little, and Christopher Yen (finance), Jennifer Saperstein, Ashley Sprague, and Santiago Zalazar (anticorruption), Nicole Duclos and Paris Aboro (international arbitration), and Michael Nonaka, Kimberly Strosnider, and Jenny Konko (regulatory).