SMFG News & Events

Fiserv (FISV) announced a strategic partnership with Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company (SMFG) to bring Fiserv's Clover suite of products to the country. This collaboration will bring an integrated payments and business management platform to millions of retail, food & beverage and professional service small businesses in Japan, driving digital transformation, improving operational efficiency, and accelerating adoption of cashless payments. Expected to launch in late 2026, the Clover suite of products will be tailored to Japan's unique business environment and support the country's national objective of increasing cashless payments to 65% by 2030. The platform will offer multistore support, smartphone-based operations, and centralized management tools.

A group of approximately 20 lenders is providing a roughly $18B project finance loan to help fund the building of a data center campus linked to Oracle (ORCL), marking the most recent massive debt deal to help fund the AI boom, Bloomberg's Paula Seligson, Jeannine Amodeo, and Laura Benitez report. Sumitomo Mitsui (SMFG), BNP Paribas (BNPQY), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial (MUFG) are administrative agents on the loan, the authors say, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The group has brought other banks into the fold, and will now sell the debt to additional firms and institutional investors in a retail syndication, with commitments due later this month, the authors note.

Jefferies Financial (JEF), Sumitomo Mitsui (SMFG), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking and SMBC Nikko Securities announced that they are significantly expanding their global strategic alliance. SMBC Group and Jefferies initially entered into a strategic alliance in 2021 to collaborate on future corporate and investment banking business opportunities. In 2023, the alliance was expanded to enhance collaboration across M&A, equity and debt capital markets, with a particular focus on investment grade clients in the U.S. SMBC Group and Jefferies subsequently added memoranda of understanding to expand their alliance to the EMEA region, Canada, Asia and Australia, as well as to expand the scope of joint coverage initiatives to larger global sponsors, pre-IPO companies, and sub-investment grade corporate clients. This will include combining their Japanese equities and ECM businesses, expanding joint coverage of larger sponsors and implementing in EMEA joint origination, underwriting and execution of syndicated leveraged loans for these clients, SMBC agreeing to increase its equity ownership in Jefferies to up to 20% in the open market, SMBC providing Jefferies approximately $2.5B in new credit facilities to support Jefferies and to facilitate collaboration efforts, including EMEA leveraged lending, U.S. pre-IPO lending and asset-backed securitization, subject to receipt of applicable regulatory approvals.