James Raanan is a partner in High Tech and Venture Capital practice and Head of its Telecom activities at Amit, Pollak, Matalon & Co.
James’ practice focuses on M&A, private equity and venture capital funds, and general corporate matters. He has worked on numerous buy and sell side acquisitions, carve-out transactions, management buyouts, and sell side private equity deals.
James also serves as trusted counsel to public and private companies for whom he provides a broad range of legal and business advisory services. This includes negotiation of complex B2B commercial arrangements and management and settlement of contentious matters.
James spent over 18 years at IDT, a telecommunications and payments company, traded on the NYSE. As General Counsel of IDT Telecom he presided over management of the company’s global legal and HR matters.
James has substantial hands-on experience advising companies in the fintech space. He has served on the board of IDT’s European bank since 2010, which was a pioneer in the E-money and BIN sponsorship space. James is often asked to advise on major software integration agreements in the financial services space, card payment processor agreements, BIN sponsorship agreements and other vendor agreements on the provider and customer side.
Notable representations have included:
M&A, PE, VC
- Sale of UK/US language services company to PE
- Acquisition by a US public company in its acquisition of a Uruguayan IP telephony company.
- Stock purchase by a US public company of a start-up in the African crypto space.
- MBO/carve out of a European mobile money/telecoms company.
- MBO of a UK based entertainment company.
- Acquisition by private equity of a US/Israeli telecoms company.
- Acquisition of Israeli software vendor in telecoms space.
- Sale of Israeli cyber company to a large US corporation.
Commercial Agreements
- Card payment processor agreement with industry leader covering high (>$400m) of annual transaction volume.
- MSA for provision of KYC systems for Bank.
- MSA for banking platform provider agreement.
- MSA for transaction monitoring agreement.
- MSA & Systems Integration Agreement payment processing for Bank
- US BIN sponsorship agreement for NEO bank (NEO bank side).
- European BIN sponsorship agreements for European bank (issuer side).
- Outsourced platform agreement for SMS business.
