Deutsche Bank AG is out.
Bloomberg News reported the Frankfurt, Germany-based global investment bank and financial services company is no longer interested in buying Wirecard AG’s banking unit because it is too expensive, according to a source.
Michael Jaffé, the court-appointed insolvency administrator of the failed German payments company, is seeking a minimum of 100 million euros ($119 million) to close the deal and would rather not seek a liquidation, sources told the news service.
Last week, Jaffé rejected Deutsche Bank’s offer because it was too low, Bloomberg reported.
A Deutsche Bank spokesman declined to comment.
Also last week, Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd. announced plans to sell its U.K. operations to Railsbank, the London-based FinTech. The deal came more than two months after the disgraced German payments company filed for insolvency. The agreement includes the company’s card technology, clients and assets. Financial terms were not disclosed.
“Railsbank has proven production experience of running over 50 card programs in the United Kingdom, European Union, United States and Singapore and has all the supporting operational and license infrastructure,” Wirecard said in a statement on Friday (Aug. 28).
The company also agreed to sell its Brazilian business to Sao Paulo-based PagSeguro Digital, among the nation’s largest mobile payment-based eCommerce companies.
The sales come after Wirecard’s June filing for insolvency. The company admitted that 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) said to have been deposited into two Philippines banks did not exist.
“It is particularly pleasing that the sale of Wirecard Brazil has been the first success with respect to the sale of assets, because the framework conditions of the Wirecard insolvency proceedings have been, and still are, very difficult,” Jaffé said in a statement.
