At least five bidders have gone through to a second round in the auction of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC's global merchant services division, currently valued at up to 2.5 billion pounds ($3.8 billion), people familiar with the matter said Friday.
TPG Inc.; Permira; CVC Capital Partners Ltd.; Canada's largest payments processor, Moneris Solutions; and Advent International Corp., bidding jointly with Bain Capital LLC, remain in the process.
Due diligence is scheduled to begin this week, these people said.
A large number of buyout firms and some payments processing and technology firms initially submitted offers for Global Merchant Services, and several have now either been eliminated or removed themselves from the auction, according to people familiar with the situation.
These include Chase Paymentech, a payments division of JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Voice Commerce Group, a payments processing firm set up by RBS Worldpay founder Nick Ogden.
GMS is one of several assets RBS is selling to raise capital as the European Union seeks to ensure that the company is not at a competitive advantage to peers that did not receive the same government backing.
