Spun-Around: Going Private After Going Public?

WALL STREET – In the continuing frenzy over buyouts and spin-offs, speculators are looking at the possibility that Western Union will be taken private, just five months after it was spun off again as a public company. The speculation was heightened yesterday afer Fitch Ratings circulated a report that the world’s leading money transmitter could be a target for a leveraged buyout. The speculation comes just a week after First Data Corp., which spun-off Western Union last October, agreed to be taken private by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in one of the biggest corporate buyouts ever. Fitch cited a sharp rise in Western Union’s five-year credit default swap spreads after announcement of the $29 billion First Data deal, as well as indications that the tax-free nature of the Western Union spin-off would be unaffected by an LBO. A deal for Western Union, said Fitch, could be of the same size as the First Data deal. Western Union, which was acquired by First Data in 1995, was founded in 1851 and was one of the 11 original publicly traded companies to be tracked in the Dow Jones average. The company now operates the world’s biggest remittance network, with more than 300,000 agents in over 250 countries.