Friday , March 29, 2024

First Data Sets Vote on Concord Acquisition

First Data Corp. has announced that a shareholder vote on its proposed merger with Concord EFS Inc. will take place Oct. 28 in Englewood, Colo., where the giant transaction-processing company is based. First Data announced its proposed all-stock acquisition of Concord EFS, a major electronic-funds-transfer processor and operator of the Star EFT network, on April 2.

The agreement calls for First Data to issue 0.40 shares of First Data common stock for each Concord EFS share, or 200 million First Data shares in all. The deal was valued at about $7 billion at the time it was announced in April. First Data shareholders of record as of Sept. 8 will be entitled to vote at the meeting.

The announcement comes at the same time the proposed acquisition is coming under fire from a coalition of Latino groups, which charges that First Data’s acquisition of Concord will reinforce what it sees as a dominant position First Data holds in payment channels favored by Latinos. Mexican-Americans, for example, rely heavily on First Data’s Western Union money-transfer service to wire money home. The group plans to take its concerns to the Department of Justice, which has been reviewing the proposed merger.

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