Visa deposits $600 million into litigation escrow account that functions like a share buyback

Visa Inc. said Tuesday that its board of directors approved a deposit of $600 million into a litigation escrow account that the company previously set up in response to a years-old merchant lawsuit. The account is set up so that funding of the litigation escrow account dilutes the value of the company’s bank-owned class B shares relative to the company’s class A shares. As such, the move functions like a buyback of Visa’s regular class A shares because the conversion rate of class B shares is reduced. The account was set up this way when Visa went public more than a decade ago after living most of its corporate life as a bank-owned cooperative. Visa has funded this account numerous times in the past and didn’t immediately respond to MarketWatch’s request for comment about why it was adding the incremental $600 million now. For more on Visa’s class B shares, MarketWatch discussed the setup in depth following a 2018 funding of the litigation escrow account.

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