Headlines:
JPM Chase Buying Neovest from CCP CheckFree Closing Office in Ontario Old National of Ind. Replacing Systems
JPM Chase Buying Neovest from CCP
JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to acquire the trading technology provider Neovest Holdings Inc. from the Hartford, Conn., private equity company CCP Equity Partners.
The deal, announced Thursday, is scheduled to close next quarter. JPMorgan Chase did not say how much it would pay but did say that Neovest's electronic execution and order management technology would improve its trading services.
Neovest's employees would continue to work from their Orem, Utah, offices, and the company would function as a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase.
David Young, a partner with CCP Equity, said in an interview that other investment banking companies are interested in this type of technology.
"It's clear that there is a real movement" toward electronic trading, he said. "All of the big players in the equity space understand that they have to have a platform like this."
CheckFree Closing Office in Ontario
The online bill payment technology and service provider CheckFree Corp. plans to shut down its electronic billing and payment office in Waterloo, Ontario.
In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last week, CheckFree said that the closing would affect about 200 employees, and that it plans to move the work to its Norcross, Ga., headquarters.
CheckFree inherited the Waterloo office when it bought the e-billing software developer BlueGill Technologies Inc. in 2000. CheckFree closed BlueGill's main office in Ann Arbor, Mich., in March 2002.
Judy Wicks, a vice president at CheckFree, said in an interview Thursday that it decided the Waterloo office's work is "important enough to have right here, where the rest of the development team is."
The Waterloo workers will continue to work at the office through October, and CheckFree hopes to rehire many of them, though it is too early to say how many will agree to move, Ms. Wicks said.
CheckFree will incur about $5.5 million of pretax charges in its fiscal fourth quarter, which will end June 30, mostly for the expenses and benefits paid for the terminations.
Old National of Ind. Replacing Systems
To increase its fee income, Old National Bancorp of Evansville, Ind., is consolidating its cash management systems for online business banking.
By next spring the $8.6 billion-asset Old National plans to move even its 4,000 smallest business customers - those with less than $1 million of annual sales - to the P&H Web Cash Manager Suite from P&H Solutions Inc., the Newton, Mass., vendor formerly known as Politzer & Haney Inc.
P&H announced the deal Monday.
Annette W. Hudgions, the chief administrative officer of Old National and the president of its services division, said in an interview Wednesday that her company is currently using four systems, including a retail one being used by individuals and by the smallest business customers.
Ms. Hudgions said Old National has offered three vendors' cash-management offerings to its 2,500 largest customers since 2000.
It uses services from Fundtech Ltd. of Jersey City to provide dial-up access to its large commercial customers and later added P&H for Internet access. But Old National was not satisfied with P&H, so it later hired Hamilton & Sullivan Ltd. (now a unit of Fidelity National Financial Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla.) to handle some of the Internet work, with an eye toward replacing P&H with Hamilton & Sullivan.
More than a year ago, with the Fundtech and Hamilton & Sullivan contracts nearing expiration, Old National started studying its online cash management systems again.
Old National is installing version 7.2 of the P&H system and plans to convert the customers currently using the Fundtech and Hamilton & Sullivan systems by this fall.
P&H is expected to make its version 7.3 of its system available in the first quarter. When it does, Old National will convert its smallest business customers.
James C. Ryan 3d, the treasurer of Old National and the coordinator of cash management product sales, said that version 7.3 will be easier for customers with the simplest needs to use. Version 7.2 is "not as easy a platform as our retail platform is today."
Old National will continue to offer basic business banking for free to the 4,000 smallest business customers but will charge them for features such as automated clearing house payments and taxes. "We had no way of upselling them, so to speak, when they were on the retail platform," Mr. Ryan said.
Last week P&H announced that it has installed and implemented the Web Cash Manager suite at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta. The installation, including set-up, product testing, and training, was completed in 120 days.
