SoFi reportedly held talks with Charles Schwab earlier this year about the brokerage potentially acquiring it, according to a post from Investopedia.
The acquisitions talks, originally covered in The Financial Times (paywall), were said to have come after the fintech company raised $500 million in funding led by Silver Lake.
SoFi was first reported to be nearing the Silver Lake deal earlier in February, which would lock in another major investment after its $1 billion in funding led by SoftBank Group back in 2015.
From the article:
Citing people familiar with the matter, the Financial Times reported the deal talks with Schwab were prompted by a $6 billion offer from a foreign bank after SoFi raised $500 million in funding led by Silver Lake. With a more than $4 billion valuation after that, the unnamed foreign bank expressed interest in acquiring SoFi. That prompted the online lender to reach out to other potential suitors aiming to fetch $8 billion to $10 billion in a sale.
Schwab, among other companies based in the U.S., reportedly held talks but couldn’t come up with an offer that matched what SoFi was hoping to fetch
Since it couldn’t get an offer high enough, SoFi is reportedly waiting to potentially launch an initial public offering in 2019.
The talks don’t have an exact time frame but rather started at the funding announcement in February.
However, over the past several months, SoFi made the news for its alleged toxic work environment.
It’s not clear if the claims had on impact on this news, but it was enough to force out SoFi's chief executive, Mike Cagney. And, the news was enough to significantly reduce SoFi's chances of becoming a bank. Earlier this month, SoFi announced it pulled its bank application.
But where these acquisition talks fall amid this recent news isn’t clear.
