The sentence that sent me back to 2019 was in a Global Payments press release. On 17 April 2025 the company said it would "divest its Issuer Solutions business to FIS for $13.5 billion and acquire Worldpay from GTCR and FIS for a net purchase price of $22.7 billion, or total value of $24.25 billion including $1.55 billion of anticipated tax assets." The deal closed on 9 January 2026.
So Worldpay has had three owners in six years, and FIS sat on both sides. It bought the business, sold most of it to focus on banking technology, and twenty-one months later paid $13.5 billion for a different unit. I wanted to see what the filings say about that middle step, the divestiture, because it is the one where a seller argues that owning less will be worth more.
The starting point is the 2019 announcement, which put the deal at "an enterprise value of approximately $43 billion, including the assumption of Worldpay debt, which FIS expects to refinance." Four years later the same asset was worth $18.5 billion in the sale to GTCR. I had to read those two numbers side by side a few times before the size of the gap sank in.
FIS wrote the difference down before it sold. Its 2023 annual report says that "in 2022, we recorded a goodwill impairment charge of $17.6 billion related to the held-for-sale reporting unit", and then "an additional $6.8 billion goodwill impairment, reflective of the price at which we agreed to sell a majority interest in the Worldpay Merchant Solutions business." On top came a $1.9 billion valuation allowance, tied to deferred tax liabilities that did not move with the business.
The July 2023 release gives enough to rebuild the earnings base. GTCR's funds took 55%, "valuing Worldpay at $18.5 billion, including $1 billion of consideration contingent on the returns realized by GTCR exceeding certain thresholds." The upfront part, $17.5 billion, was struck at "a 9.8-times multiple on expected fiscal 2023 adjusted EBITDA, including estimated dis-synergies and previously unallocated corporate and other costs."
Divide $17.5 billion by 9.8 and forward adjusted EBITDA comes out at $1.786 billion. I checked that against a second disclosure, because a derived number is only worth something if it survives a test. FIS also said that with the contingent billion included, "the multiple on the transaction would increase to approximately 10.4-times." Dividing $18.5 billion by $1.786 billion gives 10.36 times, within four hundredths of a turn of the company's own figure.
Now the part I keep thinking about. The headline fall from $43 billion to $18.5 billion is $24.5 billion. The goodwill charges add up to $24.4 billion, which is 99.6% of it. Add the valuation allowance and recognised charges reach $26.3 billion, or 107.3% of the fall. The accounting caught up with the sale price almost to the dollar.
This is the useful bit for sellers, so it goes here. Look at that phrase in the multiple, "estimated dis-synergies and previously unallocated corporate and other costs." FIS priced the separation bill into the number. If your own model leaves out the overhead that stays behind after the sale, a buyer will add it during diligence and your multiple will shrink in front of you.
I would take two more things from this file. An impairment booked in the same quarter as the agreement is a price signal, and here the $6.8 billion charge and the GTCR deal landed together. And a retained minority stake is cheap insurance: FIS kept 45%, took more than $12 billion in net cash at closing on 31 January 2024, and still owned part of Worldpay when Global Payments came along.
The academic case for selling to focus comes mostly from Kose John and Eli Ofek, "Asset sales and increase in focus", in the Journal of Financial Economics in 1995. They followed sellers for three years after a disposal. Operating performance improved, but "the improvement in performance occurs primarily in firms that increase their focus", and the announcement returns were higher for sales that narrowed the business.
I think that condition is the whole finding. The research does not say proceeds create value. It says a simpler company can. A board that cannot describe what the remaining business will stop doing has no mechanism, in this paper at least, through which a focus premium arrives.
For completeness, the 2019 price against the 2023 forward base is 24.1 times. I trust it less than anything else in this piece. FIS never published a comparable 2019 EBITDA for the unit, so the figure assumes flat earnings over four years. If I move the 9.8 multiple ten percent either way, to 8.82 and 10.78, implied EBITDA runs from $1.984 billion to $1.623 billion and the 2019 comparison from 21.7 to 26.5 times. The direction of the finding holds. I would not put the precision in front of a client.
Which brings me back to April 2025. The Global Payments release describes the Issuer Solutions price as "a 12.3x adjusted EBITDA multiple for Issuer Solutions." FIS sold a merchant acquirer at 9.8 times to concentrate on banking technology, then paid 12.3 times to enlarge a banking unit. That fits the focus story neatly. I suspect it also fits a management team that changed its mind, and I cannot tell the two apart from the documents.
The filings record what was paid and when. They are silent on whether the second deal was planned in 2023 or improvised in 2025, and I have not found anything public that settles it.