US giant Cardtronics pays £100m for Cardpoint
NORTHWICH company Cardpoint, which trades as Cashzone and is an independent ATM provider, has been sold to US group Cardtronics for £100m.
The US company was advised on the acquisition by Richard Pulford, managing director of DC Advisory and a team from law firm Squire Sanders in Manchester led by partner Jane Haxby.
Cashzone, which also operates cash machines in Germany, was owned by private equity house Duke Street Capital. It has an ATM estate of more than 7,100 free-to-use and pay-to-use machines, which are located primarily at retailers, petrol forecourts, service stations and food and drink outlets.
In 2002 Cardpoint, Cheshire floated on AIM. In 2007 it merged with Alphyra, the Irish electronic payments business, to form Payzone. In 2010, Duke Street Capital, acquired the enlarged business.
Richard Pulford, managing director of DC Advisory said: “This is the second European acquisition of 2013 for Cardtronics and we are delighted to have advised on both of them from Manchester. I am proud that a substantial North West business will be driving the growth of Cardtronics in Europe.”
Based in Houston and listed on NASDAQ, Cardtronics is a global ATM services provider, with 80,100 retail ATMs deployed and operating across the US, Mexico, Canada, UK and Germany.
CEO Steve Rathgaber said: “With this transformative acquisition of the Cashzone and Cardpoint ATM estates, Cardtronics establishes the foundation upon which to build a Cardtronics Europe scale business to complement our North American operations.”
“In the UK, in Germany—this combination of the Cashzone, Cardpoint and Bank Machine ATM portfolios creates scale, synergies and geographic coverage on a level much quicker than its constituent parts could have achieved alone.
“The combined enterprise to be formed from this transaction, Cardtronics Europe, can harness each organisation’s skills and resources to build a European platform poised for sustainable growth in the UK and expansion into attractive markets such as Germany.”
