(Oct 18): Mitsubishi Corp will pay 18.4 billion pesos (US$319 million or RM1.37 billion) to buy half of a Philippine company that owns a stake in the nation’s biggest fintech platform GCash.

The Japanese conglomerate will acquire 50% of Ayala Corp’s AC Ventures Holdings Corp, which owns a 13% stake in Globe Fintech Innovations Inc, the company behind GCash, Ayala said in a stock exchange disclosure on Friday.

Mitsubishi’s move follows Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc’s acquisition of an 8% stake in GCash in August, which pushed the valuation of the fintech platform that’s also owned by Globe Telecom Inc and Ant Group, the company backed by billionaire Jack Ma, to US$5 billion.

Mitsubishi will “pursue future investment opportunities” under the terms of the deal, it said in a separate statement.

GCash has around 94 million registered users in the Philippines, where a large chunk of the nation’s estimated 112 million population have no bank accounts. That makes the Philippines “an attractive market with significant room for growth in digital financial services,” Mitsubishi said.

Mitsubishi and Ayala, the Philippines’ oldest conglomerate, are also set to sign a memorandum of understanding “for comprehensive collaboration to promote further business development in the Philippines,” expanding a decades-old partnership in areas that include property, energy, water and auto dealerships, Ayala said.

News site InsiderPH, which first reported the transaction on Thursday, said AC Ventures will sell primary shares to Mitsubishi to allow the Japanese company to own half of the Ayala venture capital fund, and end up indirectly owning 6.5% of the fintech. Ayala will receive cash, some of which will be used to pay a loan that funded AC Ventures’s purchase of its GCash stake early this year.

Uploaded by Magessan Varatharaja