Alliance Data Systems agrees $7.8bn takeover

LONDON - US customer loyalty and data services firm Alliance Data Systems has agreed to be taken over by private equity group Blackstone, in a $7.8bn (拢4bn) deal.

Alliance Data owns the North American Air Miles coalition loyalty programme and Epsilon, a provider of multichannel, data-driven marketing services.

The deal came in the same week that US data company Acxiom accepted a $3bn takeover offer from shareholder ValueAct Capital Partners and private equity firm Silver Lake.

In January, Alliance Data acquired the UK and US data co-operative company Abacus from DoubleClick for $435m.