Discover Financial Services has merged with Capital One Financial in a $50.6 billion all-stock transaction that combines Capital One’s scale in credit cards and banking with Discover’s vertically integrated global payments network, enhancing the combined company’s ability to compete with the nation’s largest credit card networks.
Discover’s payments network accounts for than 70 million merchant acceptance points in more than 200 countries and territories. The merger provides additional capital to scale Discover’s customer network and allows Capital One to work directly with merchants and leverage its customer base, technology, and data ecosystem to drive more sales.
The S&C team that advised Discover includes Rodge Cohen, Mitch Eitel, Jared Fishman, Ethan Chess, Rayna Guo and Adam Toobin. Marc Treviño, Sarah Remmer Long and Brittney Kidwell advised on executive compensation matters. Eric Wang, Michael Orchowski and James Jang advised on tax matters. Mehdi Ansari and Elizabeth Levin advised on intellectual property matters.
With our leading Financial Services practice, S&C is at the forefront of payment systems developments, helping a broad range of clients develop, establish and improve payment systems and advising on the full range of related regulatory issues.
S&C was recognized as a Banking “Practice Group of the Year” this year by Law360. The Firm’s recent work for clients in the financial services and payments sector includes advising:
- Credit Suisse in its $3.3 billion merger with UBS, the first merger of two global, systemically important banks since the 2008 financial crisis.
- Wells Fargo in its global settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that resolved novel consumer protection issues.
- PacWest in its all-stock merger with Banc of California.
- Fiserv in its acquisition of e-commerce giant First Data in an all-stock transaction valued at $22 billion. The combination created one of the world's leading payments and financial technology providers.