December 28, 2004
The Age: Australia's St. George Bank expects to book a pretax profit of $26.6 million (U.S. $20.5 million) from the $38 million (U.S. $29.3 million) sale of its non-bank branded ATM network.
The nation's fifth-largest bank is selling the network of 700 Active Cash ATMs to the Australian Stock Exchange-listed payments systems company Customers Ltd.
"The sale is consistent with the group's overall policy of divesting non-core assets," said a St. George spokesman.
The bank will continue to own and maintain its existing branded network of 1,000 machines and intends to add another 20 machines in Victoria over the next year.(Subscription required)