Visa plans $17 b public float

Visa Inc, the world’s largest credit-card network, on Monday, filed to raise up to $17 billion in in an initial public stock offering, which could make it the largest initial public offering ever.

San Francisco-based Visa, which plans to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “V”, filed to sell 40.6 crore class A shares for between $37 and $42 a share, according to an amended registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Based on that price range, Visa’s IPO would raise between $15 billion and $17 billion, surpassing the $10.6-billion offering by AT&T Wireless Group.

Siemens to axe 7,000 jobs 

Germany’s Siemens plans to cut 7,000 jobs or two-fifths of workforce of its corporate telecom unit, which it has been trying to sell for years, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday, reports Reuters from Munich.
The engineering conglomerate would publicise its plans for the loss-making unit, Siemens Enterprise Networks (SEN), after a meeting of its economic advisory committee on Tuesday, the source added.

SEN’s results are reported under “discontinued operations” in the group’s financial statements. Siemens valued the unit at $840 million at the end of its last financial year.

SEN, which specialises in communications systems for large corporations, has suffered from the rise of Internet telephony.

In Germany, where SEN employs 6,200 staff, it will axe 2,000 jobs and transfer a further 1,000 to a possible partner or buyer, sources said.