Headlines:
EDS Buys Back $400M of Stock
Electronic Data Systems Corp. of Plano, Tex., has purchased 15 million of its own shares for $400 million, or $26.61 each, from Credit Suisse Group.
The purchase, announced Friday, was authorized under a $1 billion buyback plan the technology outsourcing provider's board approved last week.
EDS plans to buy the remaining $600 million on the open market or in privately negotiated deals over the next 18 months.
Hibernia Using AppOne Product
Hibernia Corp., a New Orleans unit of Capital One Financial Corp., is using software from AppOne Inc. of Baton Rouge to evaluate and acquire loans from independent car dealerships.
Gary Perdue, a Hibernia senior vice president and the division manager of indirect lending, said in an interview this month that 95% of his division's auto loan business is with dealers franchised by automakers.
"The consumers' credit risk is the same" at any dealer, but the independent dealers can present risks of their own, he said. AppOne "basically does all the work to underwrite the dealers, so we know that we're doing business with good dealers."
The AppOne software, which dealers use to originate a loan, tries to find a financial company to buy the loan, Mr. Perdue said. Hibernia would not do business with many independent dealers without the software, he said.
Lee Domingue, the chief executive of AppOne, said he has worked with Hibernia since 2000 and has approved 1,000 independent auto dealerships. His company works with banks in all states and with dealerships in 11 states.
Many of the dealerships are inexperienced at originating loans, and AppOne handles the compliance details for them, he said. "We protect the dealer from himself."
AppOne also inspects the dealer's site as part of the approval process.
The software vendor gets its fees from dealers, not loan buyers, Mr. Domingue said. "It doesn't cost the bank anything extra to do business with us."
