JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s deal to buy Bank of New York Co.'s retail branches opened the door for Sovereign Bancorp. Inc. of Philadelphia to puts its name on hundreds of automated teller machines in New York City.
In March, Sovereign announced a deal to brand nearly 900 ATMs operated by Cardtronics Inc. in CVS Corp. drugstores in six New England and Middle Atlantic states - but none in New York City.
At that time Laurie Cochran, Sovereign's senior vice president of retail marketing, said Bank of New York already had a deal in the works to brand Cardtronics ATMs in the city's CVS stores.
But Ms. Cochran said Thursday that when JPMorgan Chase announced last month that it would buy Bank of New York's retail operations, she saw an opening.
"I can't recall who called faster, if we called them [Cardtronics] or they called us, but we both connected right away on it," Ms. Cochran said. "We probably got busy signals."
Sovereign and Cardtronics announced Thursday that they had expanded their initial deal to include 484 ATMs that Cardtronics plans to install in CVS stores in the city, its Westchester County suburbs, and parts of Connecticut and northern New Jersey.
Ms. Cochran said the new deal is a natural extension of its earlier one. "We're in New England and the mid-Atlantic, and New York is in the middle," she said. The new deal "fills in the middle."
Jack Antonini, Cardtronics' president and chief executive, said that when his company worked out its initial deal with Sovereign it was in "serious discussions" with another banking company to brand ATMs in CVS stores in the New York City area. He would not identify that company.
Sovereign had not been shy about wanting the New York ATMs, Mr. Antonini said. "Sovereign had told us from the beginning that they wanted to take all of the CVS stores from Philly to Boston," he said. "And Sovereign had said, 'If that deal falls through, we want them.' "
The deal did fall through, and "it was a pretty quick and easy addition to the [Sovereign] program to add these in," Mr. Antonini said.
New York is an important market for Sovereign, which announced plans in October to acquire Independence Community Bank Corp. of Brooklyn for $3.6 billion.
That deal is expected to close by June 1 (Sovereign is also selling a 19.8% stake in itself to Banco Santander Central Hispano SA of Madrid); Cardtronics expects to begin installing the New York-area machines, with the Sovereign name, by early next year.
Cardtronics has recently begun installing the 900 machines covered by its earlier deal with Sovereign; it expects to complete that project by the end of summer. Cardtronics, of Houston, is the largest deployer of nonbank ATMs in the world.
JPMorgan Chase already has a similar contract with Cardtronics, to brand ATMs in about 270 Duane Reade Inc. drugstores in the tristate area. Mr. Antonini said that contract does not bar JPMorgan Chase from branding ATMs in competing drugstores in the same market.
Kevin Heine, a spokesman for Bank of New York, declined to comment.
