Headlines:
Coinstar Buys Mundo Prepaid Card Firm Account-Opening Module from IBM Carreker to Take $700,000 Charge Averett Named CEO of Princeton eCom Smith Succeeds Gomez Co-Founder
Coinstar Buys Mundo Prepaid Card Firm
Coinstar Inc. has acquired Mundo Communications Network Inc., a marketer of prepaid cards, mainly to Hispanics.
The price was not disclosed. The purchase was announced Wednesday.
Coinstar, of Bellevue, Wash., operates a network of nearly 11,000 automated coin-counting kiosks that can also be used to purchase or refill prepaid MasterCard International cards and telephone cards.
Mundo, of Kennewick, Wash., sells prepaid MasterCards and prepaid wireless airtime, long distance, gift card and loyalty programs, and phone accessories through 300 retailers, including convenience stores and truck stops, in the western states.
Coinstar renamed Mundo El Toro Prepaid Inc., the name under which it was already doing business. All 19 employees, including the management team, are expected to remain.
It was Coinstar's second deal in the prepaid card market in the past year. A year ago it bought CellCards of Illinois LLC.
Account-Opening Module from IBM
An upgrade of International Business Machines Corp.'s DB2 Content Manager software will add an account-opening option for banks.
The module to be offered with version 8.3 would work with their existing computer systems to provide a "single view" of the customer, said Theresa O'Neil, the director of content management marketing for the Armonk, N.Y., company.
Workflow features will eliminate the paperwork of opening checking, savings, and loan accounts, Ms. O'Neil said Tuesday. IBM announced the plan Wednesday.
The module, which also uses automated tools to check databases such as those of Fair Isaac Corp., is being tested at several major banks, Ms. O'Neil said. She said she did not know when it would be generally available.
IBM says 40 of the nation's top 50 banks use DB2 Content Manager to integrate information from different databases in a common repository. It said version 8.3 employs Web services technology to aggregate information and other features to take advantage of eXtensible Markup Language, generally known as XML, which can use a standardized "tagging" system to identify different types of data.
Carreker to Take $700,000 Charge
Carreker Corp. of Dallas, which sells check-imaging software, said its fourth-quarter results would include a $700,000 restructuring charge.
"Workforce reductions" were the primary reason for the charge, announced Monday.
Carreker is expected to post fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday. Third-quarter net income of $513,000 was off 62% from a year earlier, and revenue slipped 2.5%, to $30.6 million. Analysts said sales of check-imaging technology were slower than the company had expected.
Averett Named CEO of Princeton eCom
Princeton eCom Corp., a vendor of online bill payment technology, has promoted president and chief operating officer Ronald Averett to chief executive.
The promotion, announced Monday, makes him responsible for strategy. R. Craig Kirsch, who had been CEO since December 2001, was named the executive chairman of the board, to which Mr. Averett was named in December.
The new CEO joined the Princeton, N.J., company in 1999 as president and chief operating officer. He has more than 20 years of financial services experience.
Smith Succeeds Gomez Co-Founder
The research and consulting firm Gomez Inc. of Waltham, Mass., has a new chief executive, Jill Smith.
Ms. Smith was the chief executive of the software company eDial Inc., also of Waltham. (Alcatel of Paris owns it.) Earlier she was the chief operations officer of Micron Electronics Inc., a computer manufacturer later split into MPC Computers LLC of Nampa, Idaho, and Interland Inc. of Atlanta; and the chief executive of the publishing company SRDS LP.
At Gomez, which announced the hire Wednesday, she succeeded Alex Stein, a co-founder. Mr. Stein left at yearend to start Hybrid Power Solutions of Boxborough, Mass., which is to design hybrid car batteries that can be mass-produced. He remains a strategic adviser to Gomez.
