Visa files for 18.7 billion USD IPO

NEW YORK, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Visa, the credit card company, announced Monday it has filed for the initial public offering (IPO) that could raise up to 18.7 billion U.S. dollars.

It will be the largest IPO public offering by a U.S. company as the economy may be tipping into a recession.

Visa said Monday in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it will offer 406 million shares at 37 dollars to 42 dollars each, following its rival MasterCard in shifting from being a privately held interest to a publicly traded company.

The Visa deal comes at a difficult time for the U.S. IPO market. There have already been 17 withdrawn or postponed SEC-registered deals this month taking the total of pulled deals for the year to 34.