Visa Files for IPO
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.