Canadian Holding Firm to Acquire EXMO Crypto Exchange Per Letter of Intent

Publicly traded Canadian holding firm GoverMedia Plus Canada will acquire U.K.-based crypto exchange EXMO per a recently signed a Letter of Intent (LOI), according to a joint announcement published Nov. 13.

The LOI reportedly enables GoverMedia to exclusively negotiate the transaction within the next 180 days. Upon the completion of the transaction, the joined entity will continue to conduct business on the EXMO platform and will be listed on a stock exchange.

According to the announcement, the acquisition deal will “comply with all necessary legal and regulatory requirements” after observing due diligence measures. The LOI implies that the final structure of the transaction will be determined by a mutual agreement between GoverMedia and EXMO.

Commenting on the recent agreement, GoverMedia CEO Roland J. Bopp claimed that the successful completion of this “business combination” will lead to “over 2 million active users,” with expected expansion to European, North American and Asian markets.

EXMO was founded in 2013, and has offices in London, Kiev, Barcelona and Moscow. According to EXMO’s website, the cryptocurrency exchange has 1.5 million users. At press time, EXMO is the 47th largest crypto exchange by 24 hour trade volume on CoinMarketCap at over $26 million.  

In late 2017, the managing director of the exchange was kidnapped, with a subsequent release after paying a $1 million ransom in Bitcoin (BTC).

GoverMedia Plus Canada is a publicly held holding firm that operates Russian tech subsidiary Govermedia.plus. The firm operates a platform for various services such as e-commerce, crowdfunding, corporate auctions, corporate database, as well as social media, multimedia, and messaging.

Recently, Bitstamp crypto exchange was acquired by Belgium investment firm NXMH, with the platform reportedly valued at $60 million, up from $39 million in 2014.

In September, the fourth top global crypto exchange Huobi acquired controlling stock interest in Hong Kong-based public company Pantronics Holdings. The move was considered by some experts to be an alternative way for the exchange to go public — namely via a so-called “reverse IPO.”