ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The NCUA Board is expected to propose a rule next week that will require disclosures of management pay during credit union mergers, currently a murky area. The proposal, expected to be issued for public comment would require all credit unions to disclose management buyouts and golden parachutes during mergers to NCUA, and for federally chartered credit unions to make the disclosures to members, who must vote on the merger of their credit union. A regular feature of credit union mergers is the retirement and other pay made to executives of credit unions being merged out of existence. The NCUA Board is also expected to propose another rule that will set definitive standards for member access to all books, records and board meeting minutes for federal credit unions, another grey area that has ended up in the courts in recent years, particularly in cases where a credit union is converting to mutual savings bank. That rule is also expected to be issued for public comment.

OSWEGO, Ill – The board of Earthmover CU has named Libby Calderone, a longtime executive at the $200 million credit union, as the successor to Warren ‘Shoes’ Schumacher, who retired March 31 as president and CEO. Calderone has worked at the Earthmover for 20 years, the last nine as executive vice president for Schumacher, who has been CEO since 1987, and with the credit union since 1980.

WASHINGTON – Long-time community development credit union leader Bill Myers, who retired last month after 28 years managing Alternatives FCU, was named yesterday as a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute, a liberal think tank. Myers, a chartering members of Alternatives, will work in the group’s Economic Opportunities Program, which is headed by Kirsten Moy, a former director of the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions program. Myers was the developer of CreditPath, a system for outlining the financial stages individuals pass through on their way to asset accumulation and economic security. Alternatives used CreditPath to design new products and services for its CDCU members.

BREA, Calif. – Evangelical Christian CU announced yesterday it has signed with Siemens Communications to provide it with wireless communication and security for two buildings on its 17-acre campus. The credit union extended its LAN using a voice over Internet protocol communications system, allowing its mobile staff to always remain in contact while on campus. The wireless network was designed around the credit union’s existing LAN and provides secure, reliable and mobile voice and data services for its 280 employees and 40 call center agents.

ROCHESTER, N.H. – Service CU opened a new full-service branch inside the Wal-Mart here, the fifth of seven Wal-Mart branches planned by the $1 billion credit union. The opening here comes just two months after Service CU opened a branch in the new Wal-Mart in its hometown of Portsmouth. More than 30 credit unions maintain over 130 branches inside Wal-Mart stores.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – First U.S. Community CU said yesterday it has installed Edgeware Analytics’ ScoreEdge and RiskRate web-based credit scoring systems for business lending. ScoreEdge is an online real-time tool that analyzes the risk of loan approvals. RiskRate is a servicing and portfolio management model that provides risk scores for small business loans. Edgeware Analytics is based in San Diego.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Memphis Area Teachers CU announced yesterday a payout of $2.5 million to its members, the 50-year-old credit union’s first special dividend. The big payday was made possible by the $520 million credit union’s earnings last year, $3.95 million, which build its net capital up to 14%. Individual members received shares of the dividend based on the amount of interest they paid and the amount of savings they had deposited.

WASHINGTON – Secondary mortgage market giant Fannie Mae, which has projected losses for its fiscal fourth quarter, said this week it will shed several hundred jobs by year-end. Cuts to the company’s 6,500 workforce are among cost-cutting measures that Fannie hopes will cut $200 million a year from operating expenses. Fannie Mae has yet to report its financial results for the fourth quarter or fiscal 2006.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Credit scoring provider Fair Isaac & Co. said it is selling part of its mortgage division to MortgageHub, a provider of online mortgage lending systems. Under the deal, MortgageHub is acquiring more than 700 vendor partners through the BridgeLink network. MortgageHub has offered employment to the 61 Fair Isaac employees in the mortgage operation, who are mostly located in Norcross, Ga. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Fair Isaac, maker of the ubiquitous FICO credit score, got into mortgage banking in 2004.

NEW ORLEANS – Private equity firms Bain Capital and Blackstone Group have submitted offers to take over Ceridian Corp., parent of payments processor and cards issuer Comdata, according to several Wall Street Sources. The pursuit of the company comes as a major Ceridian shareholder, hedge fund manager William Ackman, pushes for a spin-off of Ceridian's fast growing Comdata division, which provides services to hundreds of credit unions. Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management, which previously prodded burger chains McDonald's Corp. and Wendy's International Inc. into corporate changes, has urged Ceridian to spin off Comdata and focus on running its other division, Human Resource Solutions. Comdata offers payment processing and issues credit cards and debit cards primarily for the U.S. trucking and retail industries. Human Resource, the larger of the two divisions, offers payroll, benefits administration and other services. Ackman, who owns 14.3% of Ceridian, is waging a proxy contest to try to replace the company’s eight-member board with directors more amenable to his spin off plan.

ATLANTA – Antitrust regulators with the U. S. Justice Department yesterday cleared the acquisition of John H. Harland Co., paving the way for corporate raider Ron Perelman to combine Harland’s check printing operations with his Clarke American unit to create the nation’s number one check printer. The ruling comes a week after the $1.7 billion deal was approved by Harland shareholders. Under the deal, Harland shareholders will be paid $52.75 a share in cash by M&F Worldwide, the holding company controlled by Perelman’s MacAndrews and Forbes. M&F has two main business lines; Mafco Worlwide, a producer of licorice products; and Clarke American, which M&F acquired in 2005 for $800 million. The Harland deal comes just two years after Harland acquired Liberty, one of the top four check printers, and now makes the combined entities under the Perelman umbrella bigger than the long-time leader, Deluxe Corp. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.

MILWAUKEE – Marshall & Ilsley Corp. announced a ‘sponsored spin-off’ of its wholly owned Metavante unit, in which private equity fund Warburg Pincus will pay $625 million for a 25% stake–controlling interest under securities law–in Metavante, the provider of electronic funds services, processing and bill payment service for thousands of credit unions and banks. Marshall & Ilsley shareholders will own the remaining 75% of Metavante in a tax-free distribution of shares. The deal is similar to a 2005 sponsored spin off of Fidelity National Title’s spin-off of its credit union and bank outsourcing operations, in which private equity fund Texas Pacific Group paid $500 million for a 25% stake in the spin-off, known as Fidelity National Information Services. Metavante, itself is the conglomeration of a number of back-office service providers, including the NYCE EFT network, Advanced Financial Solutions, NuEdge Systems, Response Data and Kirchman Corp., and is the owner of one of four competing electronic image/check networks, known as Endpoint Exchange. After the spin off, Frank Martire, the former Fiserv executive who now heads Metavante, will continue as CEO of the newly public entity. Marshall & Ilsley is a 150-year-old midwest regional bank holding company with almost $57 billion in assets.

LOS ANGELES – Wings Financial FCU said yesterday it has also considered a merger with FAA First FCU, as well as Continental FCU, the airline industry credit union that has rebuffed its overtures for the past three weeks. The $1.6 billion Minnesota credit union has even reserved an Internet domain for a website called FAAFirstWings.com, in preparation for a possible solicitation of the smaller, $290 million credit union. “We’ve explored a lot of different options. FAA First is a well-run shop,” John Wagner, spokesman for Wings Financial, told The Credit Union Journal yesterday. But, he insisted, Wings is currently focused on its efforts to acquire the $180 million Continental FCU, and not on any other candidate, for now. NCUA regulations limit the merger possibilities for Wings Financial, which operates a TIP charter serving the air transportation industry, to only those credit unions with similar fields of membership, including Continental FCU and FAA First FCU. Separately, NCUA Chairman JoAnn Johnson is expected to underscore the agency’s position on the Wings-Continental battle today, insisting that a hostile takeover–as some have labeled the Wings bid–is already barred under NCUA rules, which require that the boards of both credit unions approve a merger before NCUA will consider it. “(the merger section of) NCUA’s regulations sets forth very specific rules governing credit union mergers and was designed to ensure the full consent and cooperation of both institutions when such a transaction would occur,” Johnson will tell attendees to the Massachusetts CU League’s Governmental Affairs Day Conference in Boston, according to an advance copy of her remarks. In addition, just as it does in conversions to mutual savings banks, NCUA is responsible to ensure the accuracy of all advertising and representations being made about a merger.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service filed suit yesterday to shut down 125 Jackson Hewitt franchises, claiming they were engaged in a broad tax return fraud, some of it surrounding returns for the federal earned income tax credit. The tax preparers were charged in a civil suit with providing false tax returns based on phony W-2 forms; using fabricated businesses and business expenses on returns to claim bogus deductions; and a massive fraud related to claiming the federal earned income tax credit–a service with which they partner with dozens of credit unions. The suit, coming at the height of tax season, alleges more than $70 million in combined losses to the U.S. Treasury. All of the targeted Jackson Hewitts, in Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit and Raleigh, N.C., operate under franchise agreements with Jackson Hewitt Tax Services of Parsippany, N.J., the nation’s largest tax preparation firm.

TUCSON, Ariz. – About 1,300 members of Pima FCU were greeted with unpleasant news last weekend after the credit union accidentally changed the expiration dates on their credit cards. Instead of having its processing system reissue and update cards that expired at the end of March, it did so with April cards, which are supposed to be good through the end of the month. This had cards expiring a month early. The snafu was fixed by Monday afternoon.

SAN DIEGO – David Lereah, SVP and Chief Economist for the National Association of Realtors told members of ACUMA’s annual 2007 conference here on Monday that the problems in housing are due to “forgetting the fundamentals” of good lending principles and said there was an opportunity for credit unions to gain market share. The American Credit Union Association’s 2007 annual conference held April 1-4 at the Marriott Coronado Island Resort gathered 180 CU mortgage experts to hear Lereah and other speakers while networking and sharing ideas on how to make CU home loans a bigger share of the CU wallet. Lereah acknowledged that the problems in subprime lending didn’t involve CUs, but resulted from others “forgetting the fundamentals of sound lending.” “We learn our limits and then forget them,” he said, laying out the short history of real estate boom cycles in 1991, 1993and 2001-2005, which culminated in the first quarter of 2006. “Regulators didn’t regulate when they should have and so now, are overreacting.” He said that regulators and Congress will make changes, acknowledging that “they have to be careful, but we don’t want to discourage” borrowing for home ownership beyond returning to sound underwriting and limiting easy money to people who clearly have no way to repay large debts. Lereah said that housing affordability is improving and predicted a 1% price increase in existing homes even as sales of new homes will decline 10% this year, an improvement over last year’s 17%.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – In a rare move, NCUA issued a cease and desist order yesterday against Dover NJ Spanish-American FCU for a broad range of violations of anti-money laundering laws.The C&D directs the $20 million credit union’s board and management to hire specialists in Bank Secrecy Act compliance to correct deficiencies in their reporting; hire a full-time BSA compliance officer; ensure cash transactions and wire monitoring spreadsheets are updated daily; and ensure all required reports, including Currency Transaction Reports and Suspicious Activity Reports, are completed timely, accurately and completely. The credit union is also directed to have its new BSA officer verify the validity of social security numbers, employee identification numbers and individual tax identification numbers who joined the credit union since January 1, 2000.

DAYTON, Ohio – NCR Corp., the world’s largest producer of ATM and self-service financial kiosks, said yesterday that Peter Bocian its chief financial officer for since 2004, has resigned to take a similar position with Starbucks Coffee. Bocian, 52, who has been with NCUA for 24 years, will continue with the company until it completes its first quarter financial reporting. NCR is in the process of spinning off its Teradata data warehousing unit.

WASHINGTON – In a move that could invite another fight with the bankers, a bill introduced in the House last week would encourage greater member business lending by credit unions. The bill, which NAFCU helped draft, would facilitate more MBLs guaranteed by the Small Business Administration by, among other things, excluding all portions of SBA-guaranteed loans from the current 12.25% of assets MBL cap. Currently, only the guaranteed portion of these loans are excluded from the cap. The measure would also create an SBA outreach program for credit unions–one of the fastest growing providers of SBA loans–to provide a simplified application process for credit unions. The bill, coming a few weeks after the introduction of CURIA, which would boost the MBL cap to 20% of assets, is sure to rankle the banking lobby, which is fighting to restrict credit unions’ participation in the small business loan market. The bankers have already attacked the proposed increase in the MBL limit, ostensibly because of the threat to the safety and soundness to credit unions it would pose.

ST. LOUIS – TALX Corp., the provider of payroll and human resources services, set a record date of April 4 for its May 15 special shareholders meeting where shareholders will vote on the $1.4 bill takeover of the company by Equifax. Equifax plans to incorporate TALX’s automated employment and income verification and other payroll services with its own credit bureau services. TALX provides more than 9,000 clients with web-based services focused on three employment areas: hiring, pay reporting and compliance. Equifax has agreed to pay $35.50 in cash or stock or a combination of each, and assume $191 million of TALX debt, a total of $1.4 billion.