COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

Prosus paying billions for BillDesk

Prosus is pushing hard into India’s red-hot financial technology market. The Dutch tech investor announced on Tuesday that it’s paying US$4.7 billion for BillDesk. Adding the subcontinental business dramatically enlarges the buyer’s existing PayU payment processing business and provides a profitable base to extend more credit.

BillDesk operates mostly behind the scenes in India’s fiercely competitive payments scene. Consumer-facing apps from Google’s G-Pay and Walmart’s PhonePe facilitate huge but free peer-to-peer money transfers.

Payment gateways like PayU and BillDesk provide services to companies including e-commerce giants Amazon.com and Walmart’s Flipkart, enabling the merchants to accept different types of payments on their websites.

The acquisition will almost triple the total value of payments handled by PayU to US$147 billion. BillDesk’s size and stronger focus on large merchants will also help PayU’s micro-lending business reach new potential users for its “buy-now-pay-later” service. -Nampa/Reuters

Nigeria to partner with Bitt Inc

Nigeria will work with Bitt Inc as a technical partner in its bid to launch its own cryptocurrency, the "eNaira", the Central Bank said on Monday.

The Central Bank announced plans to launch its own digital currency later this year after Nigeria barred banks and financial institutions from dealing in or facilitating transactions in cryptocurrencies in February.

Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele has said the eNaira would operate as a wallet against which customers can hold existing funds in their bank account. In a statement on Monday, Emefiele said the currency would accelerate financial inclusion and enable cheaper and faster remittance inflows.

Barbados-based Bitt earlier this year led development of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union's "DCash", the first digital cash issued by a currency union central bank. -Nampa/Reuters

Delta Air steps up hiring

Delta Air Lines on Tuesday said it would hire 1 500 new flight attendants in anticipation of an increase in demand for air travel next summer. The announcement comes as many airlines struggle to keep up with a recovery in air travel and are grappling with staff shortages.

Southwest Airlines last week said it would run fewer flights through the end of the year as a result of a staffing crunch, which disrupted its operations this summer and led to flight delays and cancellations. read more

Delta Air, too, had to cancel about 100 flights in April due to staff shortages. But a company spokesperson said the airline's operations since have been relatively smooth. In July, the carrier's average daily departures totalled 4 377 compared with 2009 in April.

Including the 1 500 flight attendants hired in early 2020 before the pandemic, Delta aims to have 3 000 new flight attendants to support operations next summer.

Since May, Delta Air has made full vaccination a condition of employment for new hires. On Tuesday, it reiterated that policy, saying all new hires, including current Delta employees who have been accepted into the training program for flight attendants, must be fully vaccinated before their training start date. -Nampa/Reuters

Walgreens to raise minimum wage

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc said on Tuesday it would raise the minimum wage of all its staff to US$15 an hour from October, as the drugstore chain joins several US firms in trying to retain and lure more people back to work.

Walgreens said the wage increase would take place in phases and is expected to be fully implemented by November next year. Earlier this month, rival CVS Health said it would raise minimum hourly wages to US$15 effective July next year.

A nationwide labour shortage due to the Covid-19 pandemic has spurred retailers to raise wages this year, with many worried that they will not have enough workers in stores and warehouses during the holiday shopping season.

"Investing in and rewarding our team members is not only the right thing to do, it's highly important to retaining and attracting a talented workforce," Chief Executive Officer Roz Brewer said in a statement.

Walgreens' starting wage for hourly team members is at least US$10 per hour, with about half of the total 190 000 workers currently earning at least US$15 an hour, a company spokesperson told Reuters. -Nampa/Reuters

Databricks raises US$1.6 bln

Databricks, a data analytics platform that uses artificial intelligence, said on Tuesday it raised US$1.6 billion to expand its engineering team to keep its lead in the market, a funding round that valued it at US$38 billion.

The massive fund injection “does not push out the IPO”, said Ali Ghodsi, co-founder and CEO. He declined to say when Databricks was planning to go public or whether it would go the traditional route or use a direct listing where companies list existing shares without issuing new shares or raising new funds.

Ghodsi did rule out going public through a merger with a blank-check firm or a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a popular way for many start-ups to list.

“I think SPACs are much better suited for companies that maybe have difficulty IPOing on their own and have difficulty getting those kinds of investments from the kind of mutual funds that we're talking about,” he said, adding that Databricks’ annualized revenue is US$600 million.

He said few companies at that scale would list through SPACs. The latest round was led by Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s investment arm Counterpoint Global. -Nampa/Reuters