Monday, March 10, 2008

MasterCard Deal With Ameriprise to Benefit MasterCard

Over the weekend MasterCard (MA) announced that it entered into an arrangement with Ameriprise Financial (AMP) whereby AMP would be issuing MasterCards and debit cards. This has to be a big letdown for AMP former parent American Express (AXP) and the soon to be public Visa. AMP has over 2 million clients all of which would be eligible for the new cards. As MA takes no credit risk, this would yield accretive processing fees for MA.

At the time of this Blog entry Scott Rothbort, his family and or clients of LakeView Asset Management, LLC were long shares of MA--- although positions can change at any time.