First Data to pay $6.7B for Concord 

Posted: 1:00 am Wed, April 2, 2003
By admin

<TAB>First Data Corp., the world's biggest credit-card processor and parent of the Western Union money-transfer service, agreed to buy Concord EFS Inc. for $6.75 billion to become the largest owner of automated-teller machine networks. <@SM><@SM><TAB>The purchase would give First Data Chief Executive Charles Fote 69 percent of the $900 million market for debit-card and ATM transaction fees, according to David Robertson, publisher of the Nilson Report, an industry newsletter. Antitrust regulators may require First Data to sell its own ATM network, analysts said.