Corpay Closes £1.8bn Takeover of Alpha Group, Pulls London Listing
Corpay has completed its purchase of Alpha Group International for 4,250 pence a share, ending the UK firm’s run as a public company and folding one of the City’s quickest-growing corporate-treasury platforms into the New York-listed payments group.
The deal, first announced on July 23, 2025, was structured as a UK Part 26 scheme of arrangement that valued Alpha’s equity at about £1.8 billion ($2.2 billion). Alpha shareholders backed the transaction in September later than the publication of a scheme document in August. By Oct. 16 the companies said they had secured core approvals — from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, Malta’s MFSA and Italy’s foreign-investment review — clearing the way for court sanction on Oct. 28. The scheme took effect on Oct. 31, with Alpha’s listing cancelled at 8 a.m. today.
For Corpay — the S&P 500 group formerly known as FleetCor — Alpha plugs a clear gap. Corpay has been scaling its cross-border and B2B FX business alongside cards and accounts-payable tools. Alpha brings deep relationships with investment managers, a quick-growing “alternative bank accounts” product used by private-markets clients, and the Cobase treasury-connectivity platform it acquired in 2023. Those pipes into hundreds of banks, plus a base of roughly $3 billion in client deposits across more than 7,000 accounts, assist explain why Corpay agreed to pay a hefty premium to Alpha’s ahead-May share price.
Alpha’s path to this outcome has been a decade in the making. Founded in 2009 by Morgan Tillbrook as Alpha FX, the firm floated on London’s AIM market in 2017, rebranded to Alpha Group International in December 2022, and stepped up to the Main Market’s premium segment in May 2024. Along the way, Alpha expanded beyond corporate FX risk management into a full stack for funds and corporates: multi-currency accounts, payments, and treasury connectivity. The Cobase purchase turned that strategy from plan to product, giving Alpha the tooling to sit between clients and a wide banking panel.
The scheme mechanics followed a familiar script. later than the shareholder vote and regulatory clearances, the High Court sanctioned the arrangement and the registrar filing made it effective two days later. Dealings in Alpha shares were suspended on Oct. 29, CREST movements were disabled as usual for schemes, and cash consideration at 4,250p became payable on completion.
Why now? Assets like Alpha are scarce. The regulatory climate in the UK and EU has pushed non-bank providers to prove they can hold client money securely, plug into multiple banks, and run strong risk controls. Alpha’s scale with private-markets clients — sticky deposits, repeat flow, and a growing software layer — made it a natural target for a larger consolidator with a U.S. distribution footprint. Corpay gets a stronger European and institutional beachhead; Alpha gets a deeper balance sheet and a global sales engine.
There is history here, too. In 2020, at the height of COVID market swings, Alpha disclosed a sizeable forward-contract exposure to a single client, more than £30 million owed. The company worked through the issue and continued to grow through 2020–2021, but the episode shaped how investors judged its risk appetite and controls. By the time Alpha reached the Main Market, the business looked less like a niche broker and more like a treasury platform with payment rails.
The next phase is integration. Corpay will need to show how Alpha’s alternative accounts and Cobase sit alongside Corpay’s cross-border franchise without confusing clients or duplicating systems. Expect Corpay to push Alpha’s products in the U.S. and Asia, where private-markets managers have been adding treasury tooling as funds get larger and liquidity management more complex. The prize is cross-trade: onboarding a fund for payments and accounts, then winning hedging, then embedding bank connectivity into daily workflows.
Investors will watch three areas. First, deposit handling and counterparties: any change to the banking panel, onboarding speed, or pricing for fund clients will be noticed. Second, disclosures: with a UK/EU client base now inside a U.S. filer, the mix of cross-border revenue, hedge tenors and margin on the forward book should become clearer in Corpay’s reports. Third, people: retaining Alpha’s senior team and salesforce will matter as much as any tech roadmap.
Alpha’s ticker is gone, but the business hasn’t disappeared — it has moved inside a larger machine that wants to trade payments and FX at global scale. If Corpay keeps the service levels that won Alpha its franchise while opening new doors abroad, the price paid will look less like an exit premium and more like table stakes for one of the few non-bank platforms that can bring private-markets treasury into the mainstream.
