XLM Rallies as Stellar Is Said To Be Mulling MoneyGram Acquisition

Amidst the most recent news of potential acquisition involving US money-transfer giant Moneygram and the Stellar Development Foundation, stellar (XLM) rallied.

At 08:52 UTC, XLM, ranked 17th by market capitalization, trades at USD 0.253 and is up by 17% in a day, 5% in a week, and 163% in a year. The price is still down by around 70% compared with its all-time high, reached in January 2018. It hit USD 0.727 this past May.

Moneygram has received preliminary takeover interest from the Stellar Development Foundation – a non-profit that supports the Stellar network, which facilitates cross-border payments – and private equity firm Advent International, Bloomberg reported, citing ‘people familiar with the matter’.

These people reportedly said that Stellar is working with Advent on a potential acquisition of MoneyGram, but that “no final decision has been made and Stellar and Advent could opt to not proceed with a deal.”

Meanwhile, MoneyGram went up almost 12% on July 21, to the price of USD 11.49. The stock is up 265% in the past year, while the company has a market value of USD 902m.

The report also noted MoneyGram being “a takeover target” for a number of years now. Money-transfer provider Western Union looked into acquiring it last year, and before that, in 2017, Chinese financial services conglomerate Ant Group agreed to buy it, but then changed its mind due to regulatory pressure.

As reported, MoneyGram teamed up with bitcoin (BTC) kiosk business Coinme in May this year to facilitate buying and selling this cryptocurrency.

The deal came after the XRP-affiliated Ripple announced the end of its partnership with the company, under which MoneyGram was using XRP in international settlement deals. This itself was as a result of Ripple’s ongoing legal woes with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
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