Headlines:
Upgrade Sends TSYS Shares Upwards BSC Has First User of Overdraft Service Report: Phishers Casting Wider Net
Upgrade Sends TSYS Shares Upwards
Total System Services Inc.'s shares are trading higher this week after receiving an upgrade.
Craig Maurer, an analyst with Fulcrum Global Partners LLC Fulcrum, raised his rating for the Columbus, Ga., transaction processor to "neutral" from "sell" Friday.
TSYS shares closed at $21.20 on Nov. 23 but have been trading at around $22 since the upgrade. They closed Tuesday at $21.77, up 0.1% from Monday.
Mr. Maurer had downgraded TSYS to "sell" June 27, mainly because of Fulcrum's "belief that the stock was not properly reflecting the uncertainty surrounding the company's biggest client," Bank of America Corp.
On Oct. 19, during its third-quarter earnings conference call, TSYS cautioned analysts that its consumer card processing relationship with Bank of America was at risk because of the Charlotte company's deal to buy the credit card company MBNA Corp. for $35 billion.
Many analysts had expected that TSYS would keep B of A's processing business, and possibly win MBNA's as well. But Philip W. Tomlinson, TSYS' chief executive, said at the time that "we just don't want people thinking it's a done deal, because it's far from a done deal."
Mr. Maurer wrote that Mr. Tomlinson's statements drove the stock price down, to a low of $20.65 on Oct. 20, and that the current valuation "better reflects the risks" for B of A and other deals TSYS is working on. TSYS is majority-owned by Synovus Financial Corp.
BSC Has First User of Overdraft Service
Hoosier Hills Credit Union of Bedford, Ind., is the first BSG Financial LLC customer to use the outsourcer's online overdraft service.
BSG, of Louisville, announced the agreement Tuesday. Its CourtesyConnect service includes an account-holder communication tool designed to improve collection rates and the tracking of responses.
Mark Fetter, a senior vice president in charge of planning and product management for Hoosier Hills, said in BSG's press release that it expects CourtesyConnect to reduce its costs and increase collection rates.
Report: Phishers Casting Wider Net
It appears that the number of phishing attacks has dipped but that phishers are going after a wider variety of companies.
The Anti-Phishing Working Group said in a report released Nov. 13 that it had tracked 13,562 different phishing e-mails in September, down 1.6% from August. The number of Web sites that hosted phishing scams dropped 0.3%, to 5,242.
However, the number of companies that have been impersonated by phishers jumped 26%, to 106, including many smaller banks, credit unions, and international banks. Though many phishers build Web sites that mimic bank sites, large electronic commerce companies such as eBay Inc. are also targets.
September had the highest number of specific companies that were attacked since May, when there were 106. In every other month this year, the group said that between 64 and 84 companies had been impersonated by phishers.
Some security firms have said that phishers are impersonating smaller companies, in part because customers of such companies may be easier to target, and also because large banks' customers have already been exposed to phishing e-mails.
