OMAHA First National Bank of Omaha has sold Retriever Payment Systems, an independent sales organization, to an acquisition group led by Retriever Payment Systems management and Windward Capital Management LLC, a New York venture capital firm, for $67 million.
First National Bank of Omaha, which runs First of Omaha Merchant Processing, acquired Retriever Payment Systems, of Houston, in 1993 to supplement its merchant-acquiring business, said Elias J. Eliopoulos, president of corporate banking at First National Bank of Omaha. First of Omaha performs acquiring and credit card processing for merchants.
Mr. Eliopoulos said the company decided to sell Retriever Payment Systems because it was bumping up against other parts of its acquiring business. Retriever Payment Systems and First of Omaha are very aggressive in the marketplace for growth, and we started running into each other a little more often, so pretty soon we were competing with ourselves, he said.
