Inspired by the 100 Yen shops in Japan and similar retail concepts in Europe and the U.S., Chinese entrepreneur Ye Guofu and Japanese designer Miyake Junya founded the low-cost variety store chain MINISO in 2013. Over the last five years, MINISO has been the fastest-growing retailer in China, according to Euromonitor International. Now, the company has a global empire of 3,500 stores in 79 countries with total sales of $2.6 billion USD in 2018.
There has been a larger wave of consolidations in the payments and wider fintech space in Europe, which have totalled some €83 billion since 2013 (now over €90 billion with this deal). Worldline acquiring Ingenico is an outsized deal among these. Most recently, in November, Elavon announced it was acquiring Sage Pay in the UK for about $300 million.
Bitbond recieved BaFin approval for its tokenized bond in January 2019, going on to launch Germany's first regulated security token offering (STO) later that year. Established in 2013, the firm originally operated as a blockchain-based lending platform for small businesses, raising more than €5 million (US$5.4 million) in 2017 to finance new loans.
In his 2013 message to GE shareholders, CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt wrote, “We believe that every industrial company will become a software company.” Last year, he doubled down, moving GE’s corporate headquarters from Fairfield, Connecticut, to Boston, in large part to lure world-class software engineers in the area.
Susan Paterson is no stranger to batting away unsolicited takeover approaches, having played a part in Abano Healthcare's aggressive rebuff of an acrimonious bid by dissident shareholders back in 2013.