Credit card giant Visa was set to launch trading Wednesday in the largest share offering in US history, even as stock markets are being tossed by worries about a mushrooming financial crisis. Visa Inc., which touts itself as the world?s largest electronic payment and credit card company, joins its rival MasterCard, which went public two years earlier. But Visa is expected to raise as much as 18.75 billion dollars in the initial public offering on US markets, topping the record IPO of 10.6 billion by AT&T Wireless in 2000. The world?s largest IPO is the $21.9 billion offering by Chinese bank ICBC, The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, on Shanghai and Hong Kong markets in October 2006. Yet Visa?s IPO appears headed right for a financial market storm with investors battening down the hatches amid worries of a credit crunch that could hurt many firms, especially in the financial sector. At the same time, a softening US economy could hurt Visa and other credit card firms, which rely on consumer spending to drive profits. With a housing crisis deepening, many consumers are having trouble paying their bills, including credit card debt. Visa, which is currently owned by a consortium of banks, has planned the offering since October 2006 when it spun off Visa Europe as a separate entity. The IPO, led by JP Morgan Securities, counts Goldman Sachs, Banc of America Securities, Citibank, HSBC Securities (USA), Merrill Lynch, UBS Investment Bank and Wachovia Securities as joint bookrunners with respect to the offering. The IPO is priced between $37 and $42 per share, which would raise $18.75 billion. Shares will trade under the ticker ?V.? The move comes at a time when IPOs are few and far between, especially in the financial sector. Last June, private equity firm Blackstone Group raised $4.13 billion in what was the biggest share offering on Wall Street in five years. In November, MSCI, a unit of investment bank Morgan Stanley, raised $250 million in an IPO. The financial analytics firm that provides data on indexes and risk for portfolio managers has managed to buck the trend and has risen 49 percent. Virgin Mobile, a joint venture of Sprint Nextel and the Virgin Group of Britain, raised $375 million last October but its shares are down more than 80 percent since the IPO. ?With concerns surrounding the slowdown in the economy, weakness in the financial sector, the skyrocketing price of oil, and the plummeting dollar, it?s not surprising to find that the initial public offering market has pretty much dried up,? said Jocelynn Drake, analyst at Schaeffer?s Investment Research. ?Who would want to issue their shares in this market? Only a behemoth such as Visa.? __
