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Thursday, April 5, 2012
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BUSINESS
Breach hits credit cards
SUN MEDIA NEWS SERVICES – The U.S. Secret Service is investigating a major cyber intrusion at an Atlantabased payment processor that could expose millions of MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover cardholders to fraudulent charges. Processor Global Payments Inc said on Friday it had found “unauthorized access” into its system early in March and notified law enforcement and financial institutions. Payment network operators MasterCard, Visa, American Express and Discover Financial Services confirmed they were affected, along with banks and other franchises that issue cards bearing their logos. A spokesman for the Secret Service said the agency is leading investigations into the case but declined to give any details. Though Global Payments is far from a household name, middlemen such as the company are prized targets for hackers because of the vast amount of sensitive financial information they handle. The company’s stock fell more than nine per cent on the news before trading was halted. It discussed the breach in a phone call for investors on Monday. It was not immediately clear how Global Payments was penetrated or how many accounts were exposed. Consumers who detect fraud usually can be reimbursed. That leaves merchants on the hook financially, though they could file claims against Global Payments. Analysts said MasterCard and Visa are unlikely to face costs from the breach, but MasterCard shares fell 1.8 per cent to close at $420.54 and Visa shares dropped 0.8 per cent to $118. The security breach is just the latest in a long string of incidents that have put the personal information of millions of credit and debit cardholders at risk. Individual banks and processors said they had not yet determined the full extent of the breach, but the blog Krebs on Security, which first reported the breach, said it was “massive” and could affect more than 10 million cardholders. Some industry experts suggested the figure might be much lower, perhaps on the order of tens of thousands. Bernstein Research analyst Rod Bourgeois noted that Global Payments is a relatively small player in the transactions services industry, servicing 800,000 merchants with a 3.5 per cent market share. By contrast, the largest competitor, First Data, services millions of merchants, with 22.6 per cent of the market.
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The big three-oh Photo: glenn cook, St. Albert leader
Mark Stoneleigh, manager of the Alberta Treasury Branch in Tudor Glen Market, speaks during the branch’s 30th anniversary celebration Friday morning. Today, the branch serves about 6,000 customers and contributes $50 million to the local economy a year.
Balsillie resigns from RIM board of directors SUN MEDIA NEWS SERVICES – The former co-CEO of Research in Motion Jim Balsillie has resigned from the company’s board, the BlackBerry maker said last week. The move comes as the smartphone giant reportedly moved to unload several highlevel staff following disappointing quarterly results, stung by slipping smartphone shipments and limited deliveries of its poor-selling PlayBook tablet. The company reported a fiscal fourth-quarter loss of $125 million, or 24 cents a share, as it booked writedowns on its BlackBerry 7 phones and goodwill. On an adjusted basis, net income dropped to $418 million, or 80 cents a share, on revenue of $4.19 billion in new CEO Thorsten Heins’ first quarter as chief
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Guy Hebert
executive. A year ago it earned $934 million, or $1.78, on revenue of $5.56 billion. Analysts, on average, had expected RIM to earn 81 cents a share on revenue of $4.54 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company shipped 11.1 million BlackBerrys and more than 500,000 PlayBooks in the three months to March 3. “As I complete my retirement from RIM, I’m grateful for this remarkable experience and for the opportunity to have worked with outstanding professionals who helped turn a Canadian idea into a global success,” said Balsillie in a statement. RIM said it is searching for a single chief operating officer to run the company.
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