WASHINGTON - CUNA called on NCUA last week to reject a proposal to open up the merger process to more disclosures on the exchange of compensation among participating executives, one of several proposals NCUA has made to increase the transparency of credit unions.

ABFCU Chooses Digital Dialogue

PETERBOROUGH, N.H. - Seventeen credit unions with credit card portfolios of over $1 million in outstanding balances sold their portfolios in the first quarter of this year, according to analysis by Brookwood Capital.

ARLINGTON, Va. - Credit unions aren't the only ones that are merging-so are their state leagues. Could we some day reach a point when we have regional leagues instead of state leagues?

LAS VEGAS - Several untraditional loans, as well as at least one old standby will help credit unions looking to ramp up their lending for the rest of this year and into 2008.

MELBOURNE, Fla. - Space Coast Credit Union (SCCU) has been awarded the Fannie Mae Prime Alliance Credit Union Lender of the Year award in the large credit union category.

PASADENA, Calif. - Wescom Credit Union expects its employees to dress for success and isn't afraid to put its money where its mouth is.

SAN FRANCISCO - Four credit unions will share almost $1.1 million in affordable housing program grants awarded by the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.

I just finished reading a letter to the editor from Ms. De May of V.A. Employees FCU from the June 4th issue of Credit Union Journal.

Some of us marketers are lucky enough to have CEOs that are from Mars, but they originally came from Venus (referencing your 5-28 issue opinion that "Marketers are from Venus, CEOs are from Mars"). We have the privilege of having a CEO that loves marketing, possibly was promoted from a marketing position to CEO, or certainly was responsible for marketing in his or her past.

At great risk, I'm about to use an oxymoron of such excess that its seems only fair right now to warn you not to read any further, as the Credit Union Journal cannot be held liable for any doctor's care that may be required. Still there? Then brace yourself for the words that will follow the colon at the end of this sentence: "fascinating security camera."

I absolutely loved Kelly Parks' opinion piece in the June 4th issue of the Credit Union Journal. My favorite part is where she likened marketers to cats, "if you give us attention, understand our needs, respect what we offer, and give a little pat on the back from time to time, we'll follow you anywhere."

BEL AIR, Md. – Har-CO Maryland FCU said Friday it has granted 12 college scholarships for $1,000 each to its members. HAR-CO is Harford County’s education credit union and annually awards one scholarship to every high school in the county, plus two memorial scholarships. One is in memory of HAR-CO board member and county teacher Edward Goetz, to a student who plans to take up environmental studies. The other is in memory of Stanley Goldberg for a student planning to attend Harford Community College.

BUCHANAN, Mich. – United FCU said it has hired Gary Easterling, former president of Century CU, in Cleveland, as its new president and CEO. Easterling has more than 20 years experience in the credit union movement and served in several managerial positions with Wright-Patt CU, also. United FCU has about $225 million in assets.

BUENA PARK, Calif. – NCUA said Friday it has approved a rare combination of three credit unions. California Agribusiness CU, Knudsen FCU, in nearby City of Industry, and California's First FCU, in Garden Grove, will form a single CU with almost $35 million and 8,000 members. The surviving institution will be California Agribusiness CU, the largest of the three, with $21 million in assets. The three-way merger has already been cleared by the state’s Department of Financial Institutions.

MEDFORD, N.Y. – Suffolk FCU announced Friday that Executive Vice President Robert Maimoni has been named interim president and CEO, after the retirement of long-time president Edward Boughal. Maimon, who is a candidate for the permanent job, will serve until a search committee locates a permanent head for the $700 million credit union.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. – NCUA reported Friday it has granted two local credit unions—one large and one small—the broadest community charters ever in the Commonwealth. The NCUA action will allow both $340 million ABNB FCU and $65 million PortAlliance FCU to serve 1.1 million people in the Virginia Beach area, spread across Virginia Beach, Suffolk, Portsmouth, Norfolk Franklin and Chesapeake. NCUA also said it approved a request from Diablo Valley FCU, in Walnut Creek, Calif., to serve more than 500,000 people in central Contra Costa County.

DENVER – First Data Corp., in the process of being taken over by private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., said last week it plans to shutter its Dayton Beach, Fla., call center over the next year and lay off the 400 employees working there. First Data said it is transferring those jobs to call centers elsewhere in the U.S., and offshore in the Dominican Republic. First Data layed-off 70 employees at the center this year during a previous restructuring. The call center provides customer service for consumers and merchants, mostly related to credit card, money orders and check processing. KKR has agreed to acquire First data for almost $29 billion in one of the biggest corporate takeovers ever.

ATLANTA – Investigators have discovered new, previously undetected variants of Prg Trojan, which is apparently being unleashed by Russian hackers. The virus has already stolen caches of data containing account records for an estimated 8,000 corporate and home computer users, according to SecureWorks, the online data security provider. The data contains credit union and bank account numbers, credit card account information, Social Security numbers, online payment accounts, and user name and passwords. One of the things that make the newly discovered Trojan such a threat is its ability to hide itself from anti-virus software, SecureWorks said. The hackers behind the Trojan have apparently developed staging areas on servers, where new variants of the Prg Trojan are waiting to be released once the anti-virus software begins to detect the last variant of the Trojan’s executable code.

SAN FRANCISCO – Hoping to capitalize on the hot market for payments systems, Visa USA filed plans Friday to raise as much as $10 billion with an initial public offering. The plans come a little more than a year after Visa’s chief competitor, MasterCard, raised $2.4 billion with its own IPO, and has card network Discover Financial, parent of PULSE EFT, is also planning to go public. MasterCard has been one of the hottest stocks on the market since then, with the shares more than quadrupling in price, to close at $168.43 on Friday. Like the MasterCard IPO, the biggest beneficiaries when Visa goes public will be the dozens of banks that make up its membership, including major U.S. financial institutions like Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., and JPMorgan Chase & Co. They stand to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in capital gains if they sell part of their stakes. Visa, which is owned by more than 13,000 banks and credit unions that issue its cards, reported profits of $465.1 million for its fiscal 2006. Visa profit was $525.9 million in the six months of the fiscal year ended March 31, as Visa's operating margin almost doubled. Over the same period, MasterCard reported a profit of $255.8 million on net revenue of $1.75 billion. Visa, which started in 1958 by BofA as the BankAmericard, has long been the dominant player among the world's major credit card brands. MasterCard became a serious rival when it was formed by a group of banks in 1965.