Florida Commerce Credit Union encourages its members to take advantage of their high yield savings account called iSave Savings. This money in the bank deal is designed for customers who want to save for their future needs like emergency fund, retirement, or future goals. The credit union has the following current savings account rate:
- $1,000 2.53% APY
- $1,001 to $24,999.99 0.05% APY
A dividend rate of 2.53% APY can be earned on the first $1,000 deposit. Earn an interest rate of 0.05% APY on the portion of your deposit above $1,000 and for the succeeding months as well. You will also be required to make at least one automatic transfer into your account monthly. The interest rat
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In my first post on mergers, we explored the types of transactions you might consider and the good and bad reasons to consider a business combination. In this blog, we’ll discuss how to get started in your pursuit of a merger or acquisition partner.
First, your leadership team must agree on the benefits you’re seeking from the combination (see my last post for a potential benefits list). Ideally, these will be the specific objectives you most want to accomplish from the merger or acquisition or what will be different or better (and how) once the combination is complete.
Then, you’ll develop agreed-upon qualifying criteria to identify your list of potential integration partners. Initial criteria to define include your potential suitors’ ideal or desired:
• Size – in revenues, employees, locations, and market reach. If you’ve decided to merge your firm upstream, you’ll be looking for a suitor larger than you. A merger of equals and acquisitions of smaller practices or individual books of business dictate the appropriate size considerations, too.
• Location(s) – what area do you want or need their main location (or corporate headquarters) to be? What other locations are you seeking (if applicable)? Define the geographic profile that you feel will mesh with your firm’s growth plan and reasons for undertaking a transaction.
• Leadership and ownership structure – what type of leadership or ownership structure do you feel will best meet your intention for merging? For instance, if your firm is seeking a merger as a succession strategy for an aging owner group, you’ll want to seek merger candidates with younger owners and leaders. If your firm is seeking a smaller, simpler acquisition, you’ll want to seek firms with a smaller number of partners or shareholders.
• Product/service mix – if you’re looking to acquire talent to start up a particular niche or service area, then that will dictate the product/service mix that potential partners must offer to make your target list. If your strategy is to add more capacity to your current service areas, you’ll want to identify firms whose services virtually mirror your own.
Then, assign a team member to use your initial criteria to conduct research and identify firms in your chosen geography and of the size, leadership and ownership structure and offering the product/service mix that fit your criteria. You can find these firms by:
• Conducting web-based research using key words from your initial criteria and then carefully reading web pages, LinkedIn profiles, and other web references to find firms that meet your requirements.
• Letting your trusted referral partners, fellow alliance members, association contacts, consultants, and other key service providers or vendors know of your firm’s intentions and the details of your target profile so that that they can suggest or refer candidates to you.
• Looking at competitors you’ve respected in the past that you feel may meet your initial criteria.
• Using firm lists produced by accounting trade publications or the state society in your target geography to identify potential firms.
These sources will help you develop a first round list of potentials. Ideally, you’ll gather information about each potential partner by reading their web site, social media sites, filings, association affiliations, and press releases. Organize this data into a grid where the prospective suitors are placed as columns and the data you garner about each from your research populates the rows – with a row for each of your qualifying criteria and other rows for other pertinent information you may discover in your first-round research (like their mission statement, values, names and number of partners, niches, and more).
Once you have your “potential targets” matrix populated, gather your firm’s M&A team (which may be a small group) to review and discuss each firm. This process is likely to shed additional anecdotal information on the candidates and may cause you to eliminate or add some based on reputation or other feedback you receive.
During this meeting, you should agree on who from your firm will serve as the point person to reach out to the remaining potential targets to explore their interest in integrating with your firm. This should typically be a high level contact on your side (CEO, Managing Partner, or practice leader) reaching to a senior decision maker on their side to meet for a meal and talk about growth strategies and their interest in a potential combination of the type your firm is envisioning.
With luck, these outreach activities will generate a few interested potentials to begin deeper discussions in earnest. In my next blog, we’ll discuss qualifying criteria to evaluate as you pursue a serious M&A candidate. In the meantime, if you have any ideas about identifying a list of M&A pursuit potentials or any other thoughts on the subject of merging, please share them with us. We’re interested!
The iTunes gets more mobile banking apps every day. Apps from U.S. Banks and global banks. Apps for iPhones and iPads. The latest: A new mobile banking app released from Citi for iPad owners. F
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As 2011 turns to 2012, active traders at Schwab, TD Ameritrade and thinkorswim have been given a little added holiday cheer.
Launched last February, Charles Schwab’s () active-trading platform, StreetSmart Edge, was updated in mid-December. Kelli Keough, Schwab’s vice president of active trading, claims this upgrade is the most significant in satisfying client requests and enhancing workflow. New are screening tools, momentum monitors, updated charting tools and the ability to link an optionsXpress account into StreetSmart Edge. The downloadable application, featuring streaming charts, news and account data, is available to clients who trade more than 36 times in a 12-month period.
When viewing a price chart for a stock in StreetSmart Edge, you can see small tiles where you have an open position or open order.
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Posted by: Brodie Jerrems in
Bank Rates on December 29th, 2011
Many investors are pouring money into gold as stocks continue their free fall. Gold futures climbed as high as $1,829.70 an ounce on April 18, 2011, before falling back to $1,821.80 later in the day. Meanwhile, the stock market continued its decline, raising more concern that the U.S. economy is heading to another recession. The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 460 points in late trading, and the VIX index, which measures volatility in the stock market–also known as the “fear index”–surged, according to MSNBC.
Despite all the worry about what is happening with the global economy, it is best not to get off track from a savings plan–or start a savings account if you don’t have one. Building up an emergency savings fund could help you feel more confident about your own finances even as the economy struggles. Shop around to compare savings accounts to find the right product for you. Unfortunate
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Posted by: Brodie Jerrems in
Bank Rates on December 16th, 2011
December 07, 2011
By Richard Barrington | MoneyRates.com Senior Financial Analyst, CFA
If you’ve ever been turned down for a loan, or taken a hit to your credit score, you may get a kick out of this: seven of the eight largest banks in the U.S. had their credit ratings downgraded last week.
Standard & Poor’s (S&P), a prominent credit rating agency, made the announcement on November 29. While the action was the result of updated credit standards rather than any sudden change in the financial conditions of these banks, the situation does reflect the tougher environment facing banks these days.
Whatever the reason, the banks will have to live with those downgrades, just as millions of Americans have had to learn to live with lower credit scores.
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Garrett is one of our most important and prolific contributors on this blog. I love reading his thoughts because he is a born motivator as well as a highly competent Rule #1 investor and he does a unique job of blending the two. What follows is Garrett about moving past the JOB and on to financial freedom:
Phil, I just spent two days teaching someone how to leave his JOB at 41 years old. He’s been liberated! He can now work at his JOB because he wants to, not because he has to. SIDE NOTE: A “JOB” is “Just Over Broke.” To me, it means: 1) Getting up 5 days or more a week to do something that isn’t your passion. 2)
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On December 2nd, 2011 the World Bank Group announced the launch of a new “Apps for Climate” competition, to discover extraordinary ways to use open climate data. The competition encourages scientists, software developers, development practitioners and others to create applications that use open data to help solve the development problems that climate change poses. It aims to promote innovative use of open climate data – for example, through apps that help understand and manage weather-related disasters, to agriculture, food and water supplies, rising sea levels and other climate related development challenges.
Detailed rules are available on the competition website but developers should make some use of the World Bank’s data resources on climate change – including data on climate systems, exposure to climate impacts, resilience, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy use – available from a dedicated page. Some of the
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RadiSys RSYS 6.12 [+0.13] High Cash Stock Review – A wireless infrastructure company.
by Randy Durig, CEO of Durig Capital
RadiSys is leading provider in a wide variety of applications including 3G/4G/LTE wireless voice, data and video products and services; Deep Packet Inspection (DPI); femtocell, picocell and macrocell base stations; conferencing and Voice Quality Enhancement (VQE); and military command and control systems.
RadiSys promise is that they will deliver whatever is needed to bring your vision to market…and fast. Their
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