Marbles and Beneficial British Accounts Sold to SAV Credit Ltd

There’s big news in Europe, as the continent’s biggest bank has sold off two of its branded credit cards. According to recent reports, HSBC Holdings sold its British Beneficial and Marbles branded credit cards. The deal was made with specialist lender SAV Credit Ltd and was completed for $385 million pounds or $796 million U.S.

In all, the account portfolios sold contained 338,000 accounts. HSBC has stated that these portfolios were not an integral component of the bank’s strategy for growing its credit card business. In fact, the bank still remains one of the four biggest card issuers in Britain and has over 10 million card carrying customers. When you’re talking about these kinds of numbers, selling 338,000 accounts doesn’t seem quite so impressive.

HSBC had actually acquired the Marbles portfolio when it purchased Household, a U.S. lender, in 2003. In April, Marbles was closed to new credit card customers. SAV, on the other hand, was founded in 2001 and specializes in “sub-prime” credit cards or those that are unable to obtain traditional credit cards. Since being started, the company has opened over 150,000 credit card accounts.

Since SAV is a relatively small credit card issuer, it is obtaining funding for the purchase from Royal Bank of Scotland as well as from its current equity partners. These partners include Electra Private Equity, Palamon Capital, and Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Credit Card News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.