Banktalk.org is speculating that Meta Financial Group, which is one of the largest prepaid card issuers, may sell shares of its stock to NetSpend Holdings Inc. and JTH Financial LLC, the parent of Liberty Tax.
Meta Financial Group (ticker: CASH) said that it will sell 1.56 million shares of its common stock to several private investors. While the business community seemed to focus on the fact that the shares were going to be sold at a discount to the current trading price, the bigger story for those within the universe of alternative financial services might be about who is doing the buying. It looks like two of the buyers will be NetSpend and Liberty Tax.
Meta says in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it will use at least 90% of the proceeds as Tier 1 Capital and the rest for general expenses, including paying quarterly dividends. Although this does not mean that either of these companies are planning to buy Meta, it does bind NetSpend closer to Meta, which at one point issued more than 70% of its cards. NetSpend had previously said it planned to diversify its stable of issuers, though it is unclear that they managed to do so, and MetaBank remains the issuer for cards sold through NetSpend’s Web page.
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