Bank tech stocks weaken as market heads south.

Bank technology stocks followed the market in a steady slide south last week, despite a modest rebound Friday.

While most systems companies with substantial revenues from banks were lower for the week ended June 10, a notable exception were firms in the payment systems category.

Equifax Inc., National Data Corp., and SPS Transaction Services Inc. all were up substantially after investment banker Alex. Brown & Sons held a conference in Baltimore last week that spotlighted the industry.

Planned Acquisition

Another heavyweight in the payments business, First Data Corp., announced it had agreed to purchase Western Union Financial Services from bankrupt New Valley Corp. for $595 million and the assumption of the unit's unfunded pension liabilities. The deal needs to be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and the Federal Trade Commission.

Western Union Financial Services provides money transfer services, collection services, mailgram, telegram, and other messaging services.

First Data's stock closed at $45.125 a share Friday, down $0.125 for the week.

Check printer Deluxe Corp. said it has entered into agreement to purchase T/Maker Co., a small Mountain View, Calif.-based developer of imaging and multimedia software. Terms were not disclosed, but Deluxe officials said T/Maker had $8.7 million in revenues in 1993.

Deluxe officials also announced that the company had filed patents for a lithographic printing system that they said could prevent the printing indutry from emitting more than a billion pounds of harmful chemicals into the air each year.

Deluxe stock closed at $28 a share Friday, up 25 cents for the week.

In other news, General Motors Corp. issued a statement Friday denying allegations that appeared in report in The Wall Street Journal Friday, charging the auto maker with artificially inflating the price of Electronic Data Systems Corp. stock.

The report said William Esry, Sprint Corp. chairman had suggested the stock of EDS, a unit of GM, was inflated. He made the comment after merger talks between EDS and Sprint broke down earlier in the week.

EDS, which trades separately under GM Class "E" common stock, closed at $34.50 a share Friday, down 75 cents for the week.

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