Heartland Bank sold its ownership in Heartland Payment Systems 10 years ago, but the Clayton-based bank didn’t quite escape involvement in the payment company’s massive computer security breach.
A $60 million settlement announced last week has the bank acting as a middle-man, passing settlement and fine money from the payment company to Visa, the credit card company, and other companies that issue credit cards.
A year ago, computer hackers broke into Heartland Payment’s computer system, compromising 130 million credit card accounts. Credit card issuers across the country, including Heartland Bank, replaced the compromised credit cards for customers.
Heartland Payment Systems, based in New Jersey, processes credit card payments for small and mid-sized merchants. Heartland Bank helped found the company in 1997, but sold its ownership in 2000.
However, Heartland and KeyBank of Cleveland remained as bank "sponsors" of the payment company. When Visa imposed a $780,000 fine, Heartland Bank and KeyBank paid it and collected the money from the payment company, according to a filing by the payment company with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In the settlement, the payment company will pay up to $60 million to reimburse credit card issuers that absorbed costs because of the security breach. The payment company intends to borrow $53 million of that.
The settlement, if finalized, would let Heartland Bank, KeyBank and the payment company off the hook for any claims resulting from the hacking incident. Heartland Bank executives could not be reached for comment. The privately held bank had $967 million in assets as of September, ranking it a mid-sized player in the St. Louis banking market. It earned $1.7 million in profit in the first nine months of last year.
In a filing with the SEC in November, KeyCorp, KeyBank’s parent company, said it sponsored Heartland Payment’s participation in Visa and MasterCard. KeyBank said Heartland Payment had indemnified it against losses, but that KeyBank could face "significant" costs if the payment company can’t pay.
The Arizona Cardinals well get some high-profile home games next season — including contests against the Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos and Oakland Raiders.
The Cardinals’ 2010 regular season schedule lineup is set in terms of teams but dates and times and what kind of national games the Cards will be play will be determined later this year. The Cardinals will also host the New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and games against NFC West foes (San Francisco 49ers, St. Louis Rams and Seattle Seahawks).
High-profile teams such as the Cowboys, Broncos and Raiders all have strong followings in the Phoenix sports market, which should insure quick sellouts for those games and push up ticket prices next year free business cards.
The Cardinals have sold out all their home games since moving from Tempe to Glendale’s University of Phoenix Stadium in 2006.
The Cards' road games include visits to San Diego, Minnesota, Atlanta, Kansas City, Carolina and the NFC West rivals.
The NFL playoffs start this weekend and include a 2:30 p.m. Sunday game between the Cardinals and Green Bay Packers that will be televised by Fox.
WASHINGTON–The U.S. economy grew at a 2.2 per cent pace in the third quarter as the recovery got off to a weaker start than previously thought. But all signs suggest the economy will end the year on a stronger footing.
The commerce department’s new reading on gross domestic product for the July-to-September quarter was slower than the 2.8 per cent growth rate estimated a month ago. Economists had predicted this figure would remain the same in the final estimate of the quarter’s GDP – the value of all goods and services produced in the United States.
The main factors behind the downgrade were that consumers didn’t spend as much, commercial construction was weaker, business investment in equipment and software was softer and companies cut back more on their stockpiles of goods.
Even so, the economy managed to return to growth during the quarter, after a record four straight quarters of decline. That signalled that the deepest and longest recession since the 1930s had ended and the economy had entered a new fragile phase of recovery.
Despite the lower GDP reading, many analysts still think the economy is on track for a better finish in the current quarter.
Tuesday’s report showed consumer spending grew at a 2.8 per cent pace, slightly weaker than the 2.9 per cent rate previously estimated and one of the factors behind the lower overall reading.
Retail sales, though, showed momentum in October and November. That raised hopes that holiday sales would fare better than last year’s season, the worst in nearly four decades.
The economy is probably growing at nearly 4 per cent in the October-to-December quarter, analysts say. A few peg it closer to 5 per cent. If they’re right, that would mark the strongest showing since 5.4 per cent growth in the first quarter of 2006 – well before the recession began. The government will release its first estimate of fourth-quarter economic activity on Jan. 29.
NEW YORK–Google appears to be preparing to market its own smartphone, a move that would intensify the company’s rivalry with Apple Inc., whose iPhone dominates the high-end smartphone market.
On Friday, Google distributed a new phone running its own Android operating software to many of its employees. On the messaging service Twitter, some Google employees described the device as a "Google phone," renewing speculation that the company is getting ready to release a mobile phone with its own brand.
Google employees who asked not to be identified confirmed recently that the company was indeed developing new hardware and software for Android phones and coming up with new ways to get those phones into the hands of consumers, but they would not give more details. One Google employee said the new phone was designed by Google No teletrak payday loan.
The Wall Street Journal reported on its website that Google would sell the phone directly to consumers rather than through carriers. The move, if confirmed, would signal a more aggressive effort by Google to become a force in mobile devices.
On Saturday Google acknowledged on a corporate blog that it was indeed distributing a new class of Android phones to employees to experiment with new features.
Mario Queiroz, a vice-president of product management, said, "This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it."
Continuing a Thanksgiving tradition, every year I ask our staff what they’re thankful for, excluding family, friends and good health — none of which we ever should take for granted, but too often do.
Here’s what they said this year, with a few items from me thrown in for good measure.
• Mentors. Each year I try to learn from people. It could be co-workers, business relationships, friends or family. Having a mentor has helped me be a better salesperson and has helped me in personal and business relationships.
• Mistakes. You can learn from other people’s mistakes and your own. Making mistakes in life is natural and makes people even stronger if they learn from them.
• People who admit their mistakes. This is mine, and I’ll give you an example. In last week’s column, I misspelled the name of Rebecca Kenyon, a local woman who tried out for and made a pro football team here. No excuses. Stupid mistake.
• Is it too corny to say I am thankful for my job? I think of all those people at the Tribune who will be facing some tough times this holiday season. I really am thankful to be a part of a well-respected publication — my home away from home.
• I am thankful that it looks like a buyer may have been found for the Tribune after all, hopefully saving at least some of those jobs.
• For all the trials and tribulations that have come my way. It has caused me to learn that we all have two choices: We either pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and make it through and become much stronger people, or we sit and wallow in self-pity and ask “Why me?” When we choose to push through whatever may happen in our lives, it gives us a better perspective of what life is really all about and how we need to focus on the present moment.
• Giving back and having compassion for people less fortunate. Whether it be monetary or hands-on support. Working with and seeing businesses and people who help the less fortunate has made me more aware that I need to give back more. Giving back to our community is something we all should be doing — not only during the holidays, but during the entire year.
• For the medical industry — particularly the nursing profession. … Health care workers are in the trenches every day taking care of people we love, and they truly are the unsung heroes of our community.
• The things I am grateful for this year are things in previous years I have taken for granted, probably along with many others. Seeing that this economy is so bad and a lot of people are losing their homes and jobs, I am extremely grateful for my job, for having a roof over my head and food on the table every night for my family and me.
• And all of us here at the Business Journal are thankful for you, our readers. We appreciate your continued support and feedback. We all have lots of things to be thankful for, and may we remember to think about them a lot more often in the year ahead.
Don Henninger can be reached at dhenninger@bizjournals.com.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ruling Labour government is increasingly being blamed by voters for Britain’s “economic quagmire” even as the recession shows signs of easing, ComRes Ltd. pollster Greig Baker said.
“There is a high level of personal animosity towards Gordon Brown and regardless of the economic figures, that’s going to be very, very difficult for Labour to get past,” Baker, research director at the U.K. polling company, told Bloomberg Television today. “The voting public is increasingly blaming the government for the economic quagmire we’re in.”
Data today showed the British economy shrank 0.3 percent in the third quarter, less than previously estimated, in the nation’s longest recession on record. Brown is fighting to rebuild support in time for an election due by June. Labour narrowed Conservative Leader David Cameron’s lead to six points in an Ipsos Mori poll published Nov. 22.
“If the government can claim that they steered the economy through recession, that will become their overbearing election theme,” Baker said. “It may change the political narrative of the time but I don’t think that will be enough to overcome the personal animosity that exists towards Gordon Brown. People simply don’t like him.”
Cameron pledged to work “night and day” to win a majority in Parliament at the next U no checking account payday advance.K. election after the Ipsos Mori poll in the Observer newspaper showed the Conservatives with the narrowest lead this year. That suggests he may fail to clinch enough lawmaker seats to control the House of Commons.
‘Anybody But Gordon’
“Looking at the poll over the weekend, it was slightly out of kilter with some of the others we’ve seen recently,” Baker said. “What it does suggest is that there’s not a huge affinity amongst the voting public with David Cameron. Basically, it’s an ‘Anybody but Gordon vote.’”
ComRes’s most recent poll, finished on Nov. 12, showed the Conservatives with a 14-point lead. Cameron needs a lead of about 10 percentage points to win a clear majority, according to Anthony Wells of pollsters YouGov Plc. A minority government, known as a ‘hung parliament,’ may face greater difficulty in tackling Britain’s record budget deficit.
The U.K. economy’s contraction was revised from a 0.4 percent drop, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The Bank of England forecasts Britain will exit the recession in the fourth quarter. The economy will expand 2.2 percent in 2010 and 4.1 percent in 2011, according to policy makers’ projections published on Nov. 11.
Campbell Soup Co. reported that its first-quarter profit rose 17 percent with the help of lower costs from increased efficiency in getting its products from its plants to store shelves, as well as lower prices for grain ingredients. Earnings were $304 million, or 87 cents per share, up from $260 million, or 70 cents per share, a year ago. But revenue fell 2 percent to $2.2 billion with dips in sales for most categories, ranging from condensed soup to Prego pasta sauce.
Hewlett-Packard said cost cutting helped its profit jump 14 percent in the fourth quarter despite an 8 percent revenue decline. H-P got higher profit from Electronic Data Systems Corp., a tech services company H-P bought for $13.9 billion last year to better compete against IBM Corp. The world’s top seller of personal computers earned $2.4 billion, or 99 cents a share, compared with $2.1 billion, or 84 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue was $30.8 billion, down from $33.6 billion. Analysts had expected earnings of $1.13 a share, on revenue of $30.4 billion, according to a consensus survey by Thomson Reuters.
Tyson Foods Inc. said it made strides in the meat business this year and predicts more improvements next year. The world’s largest meat producer, based in Springdale, Ark., said a hefty impairment charge in its beef business left it with a loss for the fourth quarter. But all of its business units, including chicken and pork, were profitable, when excluding the $560 million noncash charge. The company lost $455 million, or $1.22 a share, compared to a profit of $48 million, or 13 cents a share, a year ago. Excluding the charge, Tyson would have earned 28 cents a share, two cents better than analysts had forecasted. Revenue inched higher to $7.21 billion, up $13 million from a year ago.
The Federal Reserve should keep alive its asset purchase programs beyond the first quarter of 2010 to give policy-makers more flexibility if the economy took another turn for the worse, a senior Fed official said on Sunday.
“I would just like to keep them active at a very low level. It would give the Fed the option to react if the economy weakened,” St. Louis Federal Reserve bank James Bullard told reporters after his speech at an event organized by Princeton University students in New York.
“When you are trying to think how the economy might evolve, it could be that the economy comes in very strong … or it could go the other way payday loan. There is a lot of uncertainty. I’d hate to get the feeling that the Fed is saying our work is done. We need a policy that can react either way,” Bullard said.
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near zero last December and has kept them there since. At its last policy-setting meeting the central bank reiterated its pledge to keep interest rates “extraordinarily low” for an “extended period”.
Bullard said it could be helpful to have a discussion on what the term “extended period” means.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner defended the Obama administration’s economic record and dismissed a call for his resignation from the senior House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee.
Geithner blamed the policies of the Republican party and President George W. Bush for the financial crisis that pushed the nation into the deepest recession since the 1930s.
Republicans “gave this president an economy falling off the cliff,” Geithner told Representative Kevin Brady of Texas as the two men interrupted each other during a hearing today. “I can’t take responsibility for the legacy of crises you bequeathed the country.”
Gearing up for next year’s elections, Republicans are training their sights on Geithner, an architect of the Wall Street bailout as Treasury secretary and in his previous job as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A report issued earlier this week critical of Geithner’s handling of the rescue of insurer American International Group Inc. has also prompted calls for him to quit.
Today, the Treasury chief fired back, saying that by “any measure” of consumer or investor confidence, the economy is “substantially stronger today than when the president took office” in January.
The “worst financial crisis in generations” happened after “almost a decade, certainly eight years, of basic neglect of basic public goods, in health care, in education, in public infrastructure, in how we use energy,” Geithner said.
Economic Management
Brady told Geithner that a growing number of liberal Democrats as well as conservative Republicans think that he is handling the economy poorly.
“For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?” Brady asked. “The public has lost all confidence in your ability to the do the job, and it is reflecting on your president.”
Another Republican on the panel, Representative Michael Burgess of Texas, told Geithner that he disagreed with Brady.
“I don’t think you should be fired,” Burgess told Geithner. “I thought you should have never been hired.”
Democrats on the panel defended Geithner .
“It just amazes me how there are some people here who are trying to pretend, and I think consciously and intentionally pretending, that the economic circumstances that we’re confronting, all of them, mysteriously materialized over the course of the last nine months or so, which is totally, completely false,” said Representative Maurice Hinchey, a New York Democrat.
White House Comment
The White House stepped in to defend the Treasury chief later in the day. “Secretary Geithner has helped steer the American economy back from the brink, and is now leading the effort on financial reform,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said in an e-mailed statement. “His focus today — and ours — is on economic recovery and addressing the challenges the American people face every day.”
Earlier this week, former Republican congressman Rob Simmons, seeking a U.S. Senate seat from Connecticut, called on Geithner to resign over his role in the AIG bailout.
Simmons, who is bidding to challenge Democratic incumbent Christopher Dodd in the 2010 election, cited the report issued Nov. 16 by the watchdog of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program that faulted the New York Fed — with Geithner at its helm — for making “limited efforts” to protect taxpayer funds during last year’s rescue of AIG.
Dodd chairs the Senate Banking Committee, which is considering legislation to toughen oversight of the U.S. financial system.
In today’s hearing, Geithner also told lawmakers that the Treasury wants to end the TARP as soon as possible.
“We are working to put TARP out of its misery,” he said.
The Obama administration is moving “aggressively” to shut down “the programs that defined TARP at the beginning of the crisis,” he said.
The department has already completed its guarantee for money-market mutual funds and it has ceased making capital injections into large banks.
And the PM’s Indian audiences have reacted with jubilance.
"The south Asian tiger has awoken and the world is standing in awe," Harper told a business gathering at the posh Trident Hotel in Mumbai on Monday – and the audience rose to give the visiting statesman a standing ovation.
Yet for all its headline-grabbing dynamic growth this decade, India still has the world’s biggest poor population. At 400 million people, India’s destitute would, on their own, be the world’s third-most-populous country.
India ranks 45th in the latest Legatum Prosperity Index, which measures quality of life and economic progress in 104 nations accounting for 90 per cent of the world’s population.
It is held back by malnutrition affecting one in five Indians, an average life expectancy of just 53 years and a severely inadequate health care system. With a GDP of about $1 trillion (U.S.), this nation of 1.2 billion people still trails in size the $1.2 trillion (Canadian) economy of Canada.
It’s the nature of such friendly exchanges – and this one is long overdue – that pleasantries dominate the conversation.
And in that context it was admirable of Harper to complain that while "between us, our combined GDP is well on the way to $4 trillion … at the moment we are only doing $5 billion worth of business per year."
That’s equal to five days’ trade between Canada and the U.S. "Where we are today is not where we ought to be," Harper said.
In fact, both nations are in catch-up mode in what has long been a relationship of mutual disdain. Canada recently boosted from five to eight its permanent trade missions in India. The Harper government has sponsored 11 ministerial visits to India, whose GDP growth will far outstrip that of the West over the next few years.
India’s largest firms at last are taking on multinational status. The century-old Tata family empire has acquired the former British Steel and the Jaguar and Land Rover brands. Names such as Reliance, another old-line conglomerate; ICICI Bank, which operates in Canada; and IT giant Infosys, which now has a branch in Mississauga, are becoming familiar to North American business clients low cost payday loans.
A handful of Canadian firms have established toeholds in India, including Sun Life, Bombardier, SNC-Lavalin, Cameco and Bank of Nova Scotia.
Yet, the larger picture is one of stalled initiatives.
Talk of a free-trade pact has been just that. A deal to protect foreign investors from bureaucratic meddling in each country is stalled, apparently over Indian fears of tainted Canadian meat products. A civilian-nuclear materials export program announced in January remains in limbo, long after the U.S., Britain and other nations signed such agreements.
There is no annual ritual of Team Canada political-business missions to south Asia, as there were under Jean Chretien in China, the other emerging economic superpower, and the one that has always claimed much more of Canada’s attention in matters of diplomacy and business.
Annual Canadian corporate investment in India trails that of Sweden, Belgium and even Bermuda. Despite the presence in Canada of about a million people claiming Indian descent, Canadian universities have enrolled just 4,000 Indian students. Australian universities have 80,000 Indian students.
Yet India also is home to the world’s largest middle class, at about 300 million people. There’s no question that with expected heady economic growth of 5.75 per cent next year, India and China are leading the world out of the global recession. There are euphoric local predictions of an Indian economy surpassing that of the U.S. in size by mid-century.
But real progress in Canada’s potentially crucial relationship won’t come from PM photo-ops with Indo-Canadian heartthrob Akshay Kumar, which the PMO spent weeks lining up.
It will require a sustained, low-key effort by notoriously unadventurous Canadian firms to understand the Indian market.
That won’t happen until Canadian entrepreneurs grasp that India’s economic growth is destined to be far more dynamic than North America’s for decades, and that the easier trip south will gradually yield less rewarding returns on investment.
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