By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Prakhar Srivastava
(Reuters) -Activist hedge fund Elliott Investment Management has built a sizable stake in Global Payments , less than three months after the financial technology company inked one of the year’s biggest acquisitions for payment processing company Worldpay, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
The size of Elliott’s stake and what the hedge fund may want the company to change could not be learned.
A representative for Global Payments did not immediately respond to a request for comment while a representative for Elliott declined to comment.
Elliott, one of the world’s biggest activist investors, swooped on Global Payments as the company seeks to concentrate solely on processing payments for businesses.
Atlanta-headquartered Global Payments paid $24.3 billion in a three-way deal to buy Worldpay from FIS and private equity firm GTCR while selling its issuer solutions unit, which offers card processing and account services, to FIS.
Global Payments’ stock jumped 5.4% in after-hours trading on news Elliott now owns a stake, first reported on Tuesday by the Financial Times.
The jump comes after investors reacted negatively in April to the acquisition, briefly pushing the stock price down 20% to its lowest level in a decade. It has recovered some ground since then, leaving the company with a market value of $19 billion.
Investors punished the company for the takeover after management had previously promised to focus on divestments and returning cash to shareholders.
The deal does not require a shareholder vote, which will prevent Elliott from trying to block the deal altogether.
Over the last years, Elliott, with nearly $73 billion in assets, has become known as the world’s most formidable corporate agitator, taking on brand name companies including Southwest Airlines, Honeywell, BP and Phillips 66.
In the first half of 2025, Elliott deployed nearly $9 billion in activist campaigns and won seven board seats at companies including Charles River and Phillips 66.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss in New York and Prakhar Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Chris Reese)
