AmexGBT goes private for $6.3B, Kraken buys into stablecoins (TWIF 5/10)

Live Oak Acquisition Corp. V and Teamshares, an employee-ownership fintech platform, signed a letter agreement extending their merger closing deadline from May 31 to July 15, 2026; the deal targets a Nasdaq listing under ticker TMS at a $746 million pro forma enterprise value.

Long Lake Management agreed to acquire American Express Global Business Travel, the world's largest corporate travel management platform, in a $6.3 billion all-cash take-private deal at $9.50 per share, representing a 60% premium to AmexGBT's closing price.

Bullish, the institutional-grade digital asset platform, agreed to acquire Equiniti, a global transfer agent processing $500 billion in annual payments, in a $4.2 billion deal to create the first blockchain-enabled transfer agent for tokenized securities.

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based Reap Technologies, a stablecoin-native card issuing and payments infrastructure company, for up to $600 million in a mix of cash and stock to accelerate its B2B payments expansion across Asia and other emerging markets.

ANZ agreed to acquire Worldline S.A.'s 51% share of their ANZ Worldline card acquiring joint venture in Australia, subject to ACCC approval, to build out a holistic direct payments and transaction banking offering for its customers.

Deel acquired Sastrify, a SaaS procurement and software management platform, to expand Deel IT into full software lifecycle management, giving companies a unified view of software usage, spend, and renewal management as AI tool costs accelerate.

Investing.com has acquired Stonki, an agentic AI-powered investing assistant, to build a 24/7 autonomous research and trade-planning platform on top of its existing WarrenAI product for its 300,000+ InvestingPro subscribers.

Investing platform Public acquired Treasury App, an educational investing community for first-time investors, with co-founder Elias Rothblatt joining Public as Senior Director of Operations.

Santander UK finalized its £3 billion (approximately $3.96 billion) acquisition of rival British bank TSB, bolstering its UK retail banking presence.

EQB Inc., parent of Canada's EQ Bank, received regulatory approval to acquire Loblaw's banking arm PC Financial; the deal will see EQ Bank take over PC Financial's Mastercard and banking customers, with closing expected this summer.