Headlines:
Siebel Buying Edocs for $115M Fidelity Acquiring Fiserv Unit A Third More Phishing Sites Digital Insight Picks New CFO
Siebel Buying Edocs for $115M
Siebel Systems Inc. announced Friday that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire edocs Inc., which provides e-billing software for billers such as utilities and credit card companies.
Siebel, of San Mateo, Calif., the leading vendor of customer relationship management software, said it would pay $115 million cash initially to buy the privately owned edocs, which is based in Natick, Mass. Additional performance-based payments may follow, Siebel said.
Siebel said the cost of the acquisition would reduce its first-quarter earnings by 1 cent a share, and it also expects a charge of $8 million to $10 million, though it said that amount may change. It said it expects the acquisition to close in the first quarter.
J. Michael Lawrie, Siebel's chief executive, said in a press release that the deal will help its customers "capitalize on the dramatic growth in the popularity of customer self-service interactions."
Fidelity Acquiring Fiserv Unit
Fiserv Inc. of Brookfield, Wis., is selling BHC Investments Inc., its securities clearing division, to Fidelity Investments' National Financial Services LLC for $365 million. Fiserv said Thursday that it does not expect a material gain or loss as a result of the transaction. The sale is expected to close in early 2005, and the accounts will finish migrating by the end of the year, Fiserv said.
Leslie M. Muma, Fiserv's president and chief executive, said in a press release that the sale will help Fiserv focus on its bank technology outsourcing businesses.
Robert L. Reynolds, Fidelity's chief operating officer, said in a press release, "This acquisition hastens our growth and adds enormous scale."
A Third More Phishing Sites
Phishing continued to increase in November, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, an association of banks and technology firms that monitors the e-mail scam.
The group, which was founded by Tumbleweed Communications Corp. of Redwood City, Calif., said last week that by its members' count there were 1,518 phishing Web sites at the end of the month, a 33% increase from October. That count has risen an average of 28% per month since July, it said.
Phishing is the practice of sending people e-mail messages purporting to be from a bank. The sender attempts to lure people to fake Web sites and get them to disclose passwords and similar information.
The watchdog group says it tracks the number of separate Web sites rather than the number of unique e-mails sent, since specific Web sites can be attached to multiple e-mail ruses before the sites are shut down. It says the average life span of a phishing site is 6.2 days, but its members say that if banks actively respond to an attack, a site can be shut down in hours.
There were 8,459 unique e-mail scams tied to these Web sites in November, up 28% from October.
Digital Insight Picks New CFO
The online banking outsourcer Digital Insight Corp. has named Paul J. Pucino an executive vice president and its chief financial officer.
He will succeed Elizabeth Murray, who said in September that she would step down to pursue other career opportunities after her successor was named.
The Calabasas, Calif., company said Mr. Pucino will join it in late January.
Mr. Pucino has been a senior vice president and the chief financial officer of another Calabasas company, Tekelec, a developer of telecommunications equipment, since 2000. The certified public accountant earned his bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Tampa and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago. His appointment was announced last week.
