Visa Files for IPO

The company wants to raise up to $10 billion.

Author:: TSC Staff
Publish date:: Nov 9, 2007 5:37 PM EST

Credit-card company Visa filed documents with the

Securities and Exchange Commission

saying it wants to raise up to $10 billion in an initial public offering.

The preliminary prospectus on Friday listed the underwriters of the proposed deal as JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Banc of America, Citigroup, HSBC, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Wachovia.

Visa operates the world's largest retail electronic-payments network, and it claims more branded credit and debit cards in circulation, more transactions and greater total volume than any of its competitors, who include already publicly traded

MasterCard

(MA) - Get Report

and

American Express

(AXP) - Get Report

The company had unaudited operating revenue of $3.73 billion and earnings of $771 million for the nine months ended June 30. In fiscal 2006, revenue was $3.91 billion and profits came to $437 million.