Financial Objects Buys GFS for Complementary Technology.
Financial Objects Plc, the Birmingham, UK-based banking software company, claims it has advanced its product development plans by between one and two years after agreeing to pay up to 15m pounds ($24m) for Global Financial Systems Ltd (GFS), a privately-owned banking software company. Though originally formed to...

Hookers, jaguars, and lots of stupid loans.
HOOKERS, JAGUARS, AND LOTS OF STUPID LOANS During the seventies, lending to the ThirdWorld wasn't just a job. It was an adventure. Just ask S.C. Gwynne, who worked in the international credit department of Cleveland Trust during the peak of the boom. Before he was 26, he "had...

BORROWING SPREE BOOSTS INDIAN HIGH-END PURCHASES.
A sharp rise in Indian consumer lending should open the door for double- digit gains in high-end consumption in the upcoming year. Big winners will be the residential real estate sector and producers of major household appliances. The value of retail loans has grown over 27 percent...

DR rocks on at Quicken Loans: chief marketing officer--and lead guitarist--Bryan Stapp says his marketing team has built the top online mortgage lender with a hot mix of branding music and direct response lyrics.
"We believe in building our brand through direct response advertising," says Bryan Stapp, Livonia, Mich.-based chief marketing officer of the United States' leading online retail mortgage lender, Quicken Loans. "We know we have a strong brand name with Quicken because it is recognized and regarded favorably by 78 percent...

International banks target Middle East: increasing numbers of international banks are moving into commercial and banking operations in the Middle East region, taking advantage of new liberalisation laws.
THE DECISION OF UK BASED banking giant HSBC to pursue a majority stake in Iraq's Dar Es Salaam Investment Bank confirms a trend. International banking groups have been stepping up their interests in the Middle East over the past couple of years, both by setting up local subsidiaries and...

Western Union takes money transfer a notch higher.
For African customers of Western Union, there is good news on the horizon. To satisfy your needs in a constantly changing world, the company is setting up banks in Western Europe, with longer opening hours, so that customers whose 9am-5pm work routine prevents them from sending money during normal...

Giant step forward for First Nations Bank (of Canada).
The first branch of the First Nations Bank of Canada will open in Saskatoon early in 1997. A ceremony celebrating the newly formed bank was held Dec. 9 in Toronto at the Toronto-Dominion Bank offices where the negotiations for the creation of the First Nations Bank were hammered out....

Challenge your Japan plan.
Fundamental assumptions upon which a Japan market strategy has been built, and the conventional wisdom about how business is conducted, may no longer apply. Okyakusama wa kamisama desu," goes the popular Japanese saying: The customer is God. That conventional wisdom has by and large driven the competitive strategy of...

New service development: insights from an explorative study into the Turkish retail banking sector.
SUMMARY Technology has become of one the most significant strategic weapons for banks to survive in increasingly competitive bank markets. Today, banks in Turkey are competing aggressively to introduce new types of products and services that are driven mostly by technology. Internet banking is the latest and...

BUSINESS PEOPLE.
COLUMN: BUSINESS PEOPLE Rehabilitative Resources Inc. of Sturbridge has hired Melissa H. White as assistant director of residential operations. She will oversee RRI's 23 group residential programs in the region. Her previous employment includes work at the Overlook Life Care Community in Charlton and at Old Sturbridge...