Investor group ups Territorial offer; Lightspeed Commerce seeks buyer

September 27, 2024 2:22 PM

In this week's banking news roundup: Blue Hill Advisors and former Bank of Hawaii CEO Landon up their per-share cash offer to buy Territorial Bancorp; Montreal-based payments firm Lightspeed Commerce puts itself on the market; Societe Generale hires ex-UBS banker Jansen as the bank's West Coast co-head; and more.

Investor group increases offer for Territorial Bancorp in Hawaii

Blue Hill Advisors and former Bank of Hawaii CEO Allan Landon on Thursday bumped up by 50 cents to $12.50 their per-share cash offer to buy Honolulu-based Territorial Bancorp. The $2.2 billion-asset Territorial did not have an immediate response.

The updated offer represented a 27% premium over the value of Territorial's pending sale to the $17.4 billion-asset Hope Bancorp in Los Angeles. That was based on Hope's Sept. 25 closing stock price, according to a Blue Hill news release. The investor group urged Territorial shareholders to support its proposal and vote against the Hope deal at an Oct. 10 special meeting.

Earlier this month, Territorial Bancorp rejected the initial Blue Hill unsolicited offer and said it would follow through with its planned sale to Hope, which is expected to close by the end of this year. —Jim Dobbs

Canadian payments firm Lightspeed Commerce mulls sale

Montreal-based payments company Lightspeed Commerce is putting itself on the market in hopes of finding a buyer, Reuters reported this week.

Lightspeed Commerce provides point-of-sale and e-commerce software to the golf, hospitality, retail and restaurant industries, and competes with Clover, Square, Toast and WooCommerce. Clients include Intuit Quickbooks, Oracle, Uber and Xero, among others.

Lightspeed, which has a market capitalization of 3.4 billion Canadian dollars ($2.5 billion), has reportedly hired JPMorgan Chase to help find a buyer. Its stock has jumped to 16.91 Canadian dollars as of 11:40 a.m. in New York on Friday, up 21.1%, or 2.80 Canadian dollars, from Wednesday. It still remains down 13.6% year to date. —Joey Pizzolato

SocGen plans new California office, hires ex-UBS banker Jansen

Societe Generale hired John Jansen as the bank's West Coast co-head with responsibility for technology, media and telecommunications investment banking, according to people familiar with the move.

Jansen, UBS Group's former head of technology mergers and acquisitions, will be based out of the French bank's planned Menlo Park, California, office, the people said, asking for anonymity to discuss an appointment that isn't yet public. He'll report to Krzysztof Walenczak, head of investment banking in the Americas, and Jeff Mortara, head of technology investment banking and global co-head of equity capital markets.

Jonathan Weinberger will relocate to California from New York and co-head Societe Generale's West Coast efforts with Jansen, one of the people said.

A SocGen spokesman declined to comment.

Before joining UBS, Jansen worked at Mizuho Americas and RBC Capital Markets, his LinkedIn profile shows. –Gillian Tan, Bloomberg News

Deutsche Bank said to hire Moelis’ Mazumder for India dealmaking

Deutsche Bank has hired Apurva Mazumder in India as the German lender continues to expand its investment banking business across the Asia Pacific region.

Mazumder, who was a managing director at advisory firm Moelis in Mumbai, has joined Deutsche Bank as head of mergers and acquisitions and its diversified industries group for India, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg News and whose contents were confirmed by a representative for the bank.

He has more than 25 years of investment banking and M&A experience, and during the past decade at Moelis he focused on advising corporates and financial sponsors on M&A, debt and equity raising deals, the memo showed. Prior to Moelis, Mazumder worked at JPMorgan Chase covering industrials and infrastructure. —Manuel Baigorri and Baiju Kalesh, Bloomberg News

Jefferies hires ex-Citigroup banker for top EMEA debt job

Jefferies Financial Group has hired former Citigroup banker Simon Francis in a newly created role leading its debt financing business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, people familiar with the matter said.

Francis, who held a similar role at Citigroup, is joining the U.S. lender in London, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. He previously worked at Credit Suisse as a leveraged finance banker, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Jefferies is seeking to win higher market share from lending to financial sponsors and other corporate clients, a lucrative business that has seen more private capital providers challenge traditional investment banks in recent years. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group agreed last year to triple its holdings in the U.S. bank, in a partnership that allows Jefferies to leverage the Japanese lender's balance sheet for some of these transactions. —Dinesh Nair, Bloomberg News