Stripe and Advent drop PayPal takeover bid

Stripe and buyout firm Advent International have walked away from their pursuit of PayPal, according to a Bloomberg report carried by Quartz and Forbes. Treat this as an abandoned takeover approach sourced to people familiar, not a signed merger that was terminated. The parties declined to comment, and the reporting notes a future approach remains possible if conditions shift.

An abandoned pursuit, and two price figures that do not match

This was an acquisition pursuit led by a private-equity firm and a payments rival, not a hostile tender and not an inked deal. On price, the wires do not fully agree, so hold both figures. Reuters and the Wall Street Journal pegged the offer at $60.50 a share, valuing PayPal at more than $53 billion, while Bloomberg and Quartz frame the abandoned pursuit as topping $50 billion. The $60.50 bid carried roughly $50 billion in committed bank financing and landed at about a 28% premium to PayPal's pre-offer close. PayPal's board had judged it too low and, per Reuters, had not sent a formal reply, with the WSJ earlier reporting the two sides were still negotiating price.

What the market and the roster did

PayPal shares fell as much as 16% on Friday, trading around $53.74 after a $61.47 close the day before, so read that 16% as an intraday low rather than the settled damage. The stock had run up nearly 30% since takeover talk first surfaced in July, and that is the gain now unwinding. One detail the single-bidder framing misses: Block was part of the group that first approached PayPal in April, then left before Stripe and Advent submitted their offer, so the consortium had already thinned before it folded.

The backdrop is a company mid-restructuring. Enrique Lores took over as CEO in March after the board removed Alex Chriss, PayPal split into three business units, and management has floated cutting roughly 20% of staff. A market value around $52.6 billion is what a would-be buyer was pricing against.

The takeaway

Do not model PayPal as in play at $60.50 now that the only active bid has been pulled. The signal is that a PE-plus-Stripe consortium looked hard, offered a 28% premium with financing lined up, and still could not clear a board that called it cheap, which points the disagreement at PayPal's standalone value, not at access to capital. Watch whether a higher approach returns or the restructuring has to carry the story alone. If no new bidder steps in, the stock reprices on the 20% cut and the three-unit split, not on a takeover premium.

For related deal context, see our coverage of BitGo's $42.5M buy of NYDIG's trading arm, Nvidia's paused AI cloud revenue-share deals, and Socure's $5.2B valuation and Fravity buy.