> The complaint alleges that Visa’s CEO viewed the acquisition as an “insurance policy” to protect against a “threat to our important US debit business.”
This quote makes it sound like Visa is acting monopolistic, which is the behavior they don't want to see.
Rest of the paragraph
> This acquisition is the second-largest in Visa’s history, with an extraordinary price tag of $5.3 billion. Visa’s CEO justified the deal to Visa’s Board of Directors as a “strategic, not financial” move, and noted that in part because “our US debit business i[s] critical and we must always do what it takes to protect this business.” Unless acquired, Visa feared that Plaid “on their own or owned by a competitor [was] going to create some threat” with a “potential downside risk of $300-500M in our US debit business” by 2024. If Plaid remained free to develop its competing payment platform, then “Visa may be forced to accept lower margins or not have a competitive offering.”
It's unclear where these statements come from, but I find it hard to imagine they were meant to be public, the CEO would know better. Most likely they were internal conversations that got leaked or conversations that got logged which were part of some sort of warrant/information request.
Or you're right and CEOs of huge multi-international companies are a lot more stupid than we previously thought.
This quote makes it sound like Visa is acting monopolistic, which is the behavior they don't want to see.
Rest of the paragraph
> This acquisition is the second-largest in Visa’s history, with an extraordinary price tag of $5.3 billion. Visa’s CEO justified the deal to Visa’s Board of Directors as a “strategic, not financial” move, and noted that in part because “our US debit business i[s] critical and we must always do what it takes to protect this business.” Unless acquired, Visa feared that Plaid “on their own or owned by a competitor [was] going to create some threat” with a “potential downside risk of $300-500M in our US debit business” by 2024. If Plaid remained free to develop its competing payment platform, then “Visa may be forced to accept lower margins or not have a competitive offering.”