LA CROSSE, Wis. – Two local credit unions have joined with 10 area banks to offer $5 million in low-interest loans to help improve the downtown. Interest rates for loans through the Downtown Mainstreet Inc. will be the current prime rate of 8.25% minus 2%, fixed for five years. After that the rate will revert to prime for the rest of the loan term. Participating credit unions are Community CU and Altra FCU.

CALABASAS, Calif. – Angelo Mozilo, the co-founder and CEO of mortgage banking giant Countrywide Financial Corp., earned a quick $1.3 million Monday with the exercise of 46,000 Countrywide options at $10.89 each, then the sale of the shares at $38.45 each. Mozilo, one of the highest paid corporate executives in the country, has earned $55 million so far this year through the exercise of options, and at least $10 million more from his paid compensation, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 68-year-old mortgage kingpin is well on his way to topping his compensation last year when he brought home $127 million. That included paid compensation of $48 million, net realized gains on the exercise of options of $72 million, and $7 million on the vesting of restricted stock awards. The year before, 2005, Mozilo took home $150 million.

BROOKFIELD, Wis. – Fiserv, the leading provider of back-office services to credit unions, said yesterday it plans to increase its outsourcing to India five-fold, to 5,000 employees, by the end of 2009. The company, which began its outsourcing in India in 2005, currently employs 1,000 people there. Fiserv said its India operations play a significant role in its globalization strategy.

McLEAN, Va. – Eugene McQuade, president and chief operating officer of Freddie Mac, has declined an offer to become CEO of the secondary mortgage market giant and said he will leave the company instead, when his contract expires September 1. McQuade, former president of Bank of America, and before that COO of FleetBoston Financial, has agreed to stand for election to the Freddie Mac Board. Freddie has formed a special committee of the board of directors to review succession to current CEO Richard Syron, as the company prepares to separate the positions of chairman of the board from CEO by year-end, as required by federal regulators under the settlement charges connected to the billion-dollar accounting scandal. Freddie also announced that Ronald Poe, 67, its longest-serving director, will retire and Nicholas Retsinas, former Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has been nominated to succeed him on the board.

NEW YORK – M&F Worldwide Corp., the holding company controlled by corporate raider Ronald Perelman, announced yesterday it has completed the acquisition of John H. Harland Co., the venerable credit union outsourcer, for $1.7 billion. The deal combines the nation’s number two check printer, Harland, with the third largest Clarke American, already owned by M&F. The combined businesses are expected to operate under the brand name Harland Clarke, which will be headed by Chuck Dawson, Clarke American’s current president and CEO. Clarke American Corp. is being renamed Harldn Clarke Holdings Corp., and will be the holding company for Harland Clarke, Harland Financial Solutions and Scantron. M&F is a publicly held company controlled by Perelman and his privately held Macandrews and Forbes. Perelman is known as one of the most cunning players in corporate finance and is famous for his takeovers of Revlon cosmetics and Marvel comics, as well as a failed attempt to acquire Salomon Brothers brokerage.

MT LAUREL, N.J. – Pennant Capital Management LLC, a Chatham, N.J.--based hedge fund that is building a significant stake in PHH Corp., called on the mortgage bank yesterday to unwind its agreement to sell out to GE Capital and private equity giant The Blackstone Group, and separate the company’s two main businesses with the spin-off its fleet management operations, instead. PHH has been a major player in the credit union market for at least two decades but became the dominant player in November 2005 when it acquired the mortgage operations of CUNA Mutual Group. That included 100,000 residential mortgages and a $13 billion servicing portfolio of credit union loans, as well as customer relationships with more than 1,000 credit unions. Pennant, which has built up an 8% stake in PHH, said the spin-off could double the returns of the proposed sale. “We believe that current conditions of the general mortgage market, the Company-specific circumstances and the tax implications of a sale and break-up of the Company will prevent realization of full value at this time,” Pennant said in a letter to PHH management, attached yesterday to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “We believe that instead, the Company should pursue a tax-free spin-off of the Fleet business. We estimate that this would allow existing shareholders to realize an estimated combined valuation of $48 to $66 per share over the course of 2 to 3 years, as vastly superior outcome to a sale at $31.50 per share in the third quarter of 2007.” The letter was signed by Alan Fournier, managing director of the hedge fund. PHH itself was spun off from Cendant Corp. in 2005. Under a deal announced March 15, GE Capital will acquire PHH for $31.50 a share, a total of $1.7 billion, then sell PHH’s mortgage business to The Blackstone Group for an undisclosed sum.

PORTLAND, Ore. – TRM Corp., the large ATM ISO that has been restructuring its operations, said yesterday it has signed with NCR to maintain its 2,500 multi-vendor ATMs in the U.S. which are connected to the credit union-owned CO-OP Financial Services network. The three-year contract includes first- and second-tier maintenance services. TRM, which shed its core copier rental business last year, is in the process of a major restructuring, which has included a move away from in-house servicing. The restructuring has prevented TRM from filing its financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, prompting the Nasdaq to threaten the company with delisting. TRM is appealing the stock market’s delisting notice. TRM owns or operates more than 15,000 ATMs and is the second largest ATM ISO, behind only Cardtronics, which operates more than 25,000 machines.

PORTLAND, Ore. – Corillian Corp. said yesterday that its shareholders approved the company $240 million acquisition by CheckFree Corp., pending approval by federal antitrust regulators. CheckFree has submitted additional materials to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice explaining the combination of two major providers of online banking services. CheckFree said it hopes to close the deal by the end of the second quarter, but the timing may be affected by the response of the antitrust regulators. Under the terms of the deal, CheckFree is paying $5.15 a share in cash, a slight premium, to Corillian stockholders.

WARRENVILLE, Ill. – Members United Corporate FCU announced it has agreed to acquire the check and item processing operations of the Illinois CU League’s ICUL Service Corp. Members United, created by last year’s merger of Mid-States Corporate FCU and Empire Corporate FCU, will manage the combined processing operations and will assume all of the assets, contracts and business relationships of the league’s credit union customers. The ICUL Service Corp. has been processing checks (share drafts) for Illinois credit unions for 30 years and operates an in-house item processing center. The operation services 175 credit unions in the Federal Reserve’s Seventh District (Chicago) and processes about 4.5 million items a month.

HONOLULU – The manager of tiny Prince Kuhio FCU, formerly known as Na Hui Elima FCU, was indicted by a federal grand jury last week and charged with stealing almost $100,000 through an elaborate check-floating scheme. Roselle Farias, who was responsible for closing out each teller’s cash position each day, was charged with stealing checks on 200 different occasions. She allegedly covered the scheme by making it appear the checks were being processed and delaying the daily check deposits in order to create an artificial float to explain the accounting discrepancy, by making it appear the stolen funds were in transit.

DALLAS – TNB Card Services announced yesterday it has acquired credit card portfolios from five more credit unions, making a total of 120 credit union portfolios purchased since 2002. The latest purchases were from: Potelco CU; BRECO FCU; Northern Tier FCU; KEMBA Louisville CU and Salmon Falls Community CU. TNB is owned by credit union-owned Town North Bank.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA ruled yesterday that federal credit unions are bound by its rules and regulations regarding dormant accounts, and not by those imposed by the state of Virginia. In a new legal opinion issued to the Virginia Department of the Treasury, NCUA said that its rules will allow federally chartered credit unions operating in Virginia to continue the practice of retroactively waiving account fees or reinstating dividends previously unpaid because an account is dormant. “State laws regulating such activities are not applicable to federal credit unions,” said NCUA in preempting the Virginia bid. In this instance, notes NCUA, federal preemption of state law is beneficial to consumers because it allows federal credit unions to go back and reverse dormant account fees or pay dividends in arrears. The NCUA ruling was dated April 11, just six days before the U.S. Supreme Court reinforced the federal preemption of state banking laws for nationally (federally) chartered institutions. The Federal CU Act, said NCUA, grants federal credit unions exclusive authority to determine terms, rates and conditions for members deposits as limited by the NCUA Board. NCUA in recent years has also preempted state laws on predatory lending, finance charges and others with regard to federally chartered credit unions.

SAN FRANCISCO – Visa USA said it is rolling out its own brand of contactless payment cards which will be called payWave. The credit card company has introduced the technology at 1,100 retail locations and is rolling it out at 10,500 BP gas stations throughout the U.S. In addition, Washington Mutual Bank plans to start issuing Visa payWave-enabled cards next month in a pilot program. The technology will compete with MasterCard’s contactless cards, known as PayPass.

NEW YORK – Consumers will be able to use their own voice to digitally sign and authorize payments under a new system launched yesterday by Voice Pay. With its biometric-based anti-fraud and anti-phishing technologies, Voice Pay is aimed at raising the security for payments. Consumers complete a short, one-time enrollment process by uttering a few words that are then used to create a unique biometric voice print. Then, whenever a purchase is made, the user voice verifies the transaction over the phone or Internet. The technology may help open the payments systems to new applications for cell phones or for TV or print, allowing consumers to call a Voice Pay number and authorize payments over the phone using their unique voice print. The Voice Pay patent pending process was developed by the company’s CEO Nick Ogden, who founded the Internet payment processor WorldPay, before it was sold to Royal Bank of Scotland in 2002.

BOULDER, Colo.– Motorists will be able to feed their parking meters by credit card or by phone, under a system being test-piloted here over the next 90 days. For users who have created an account through Verrus Mobile Technologies, payments can be phoned in and bill to a credit or debit card. A driver can simply phone in to extend the meter, if it is set to expire. When the meter has run out the driver will get a text message.

AUSTIN, Texas - The ongoing acrimony between bankers' associations and credit unions did not prevent two bank representatives from speaking at the Texas CU League's annual meeting here. Steven Wise, president of State National Bank in Ft. Worth, led a popular educational session on commercial lending. Wise told the audience his girlfriend works for a credit union. Rodney McElrath, corporate security investigator for Texas State Bank, led a session on defeating fraud with teamwork.

NCUA: Health Savings Covered By The NCUSIF

WASHINGTON - In an effort to reach young Capital Hill staffers, CUNA last week released a video featuring the updated "Little Guy" first introduced just before this year's Government Affairs Conference.

AUSTIN, Texas - It turns out ignorance really can be bliss for credit unions.

MyWebTimes.com, Illinois, ran a story about the Star Ratings issued recently by Coral Gables, Fla., BauerFinancial, which are based on bank and CU results reported in the fourth quarter of 2006. Analyzing a financial's call reports, Bauer Financial looks at capital, profitability, delinquent loans, historical data and enforcement actions to rank CUs and banks with one-to-five stars. Several local banks and CUs were highlighted, including Bakelite Credit Union and Streator Community Credit Union.