KR Kroger Co

STIFEL FINANCIAL

INTL FCStone to Buy Sterne Agee Units

Stifel Financial Corp. agreed to sell several of Sterne Agee's legacy businesses to financial- services firm INTL FCStone Inc., just over a year after Stifel acquired the brokerage company.

Stifel said it would sell Sterne Agee Financial Services Inc.; Sterne Agee Clearing Inc.; Sterne Agee Leach Inc.; Sterne Agee Asset Management and Sterne Agee Investment Advisory Services.

The transaction, subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close in July. Specific financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but the company said consideration would approximate the tangible net asset value of the entities following a financial restructuring of the combined businesses.

St. Louis-based Stifel agreed to buy Sterne Agee in February 2015, a move aimed at expanding the firm's wealth-management segment and add about 730 financial advisers and independent brokers. Stifel said Monday that INTL FCStone had agreed to hire "substantially all" of Sterne Agee's "support professionals."

--Joshua Jamerson

KROGER

Lawsuit Challenges Visa on Debit Cards

Kroger Co. filed a lawsuit against Visa Inc., saying the payments network has threatened to raise fees and cut off the grocer's acceptance of debit cards due to a dispute about the use of personal identification numbers to verify debit-card transactions.

Kroger said it already has been fined $7 million by Visa over the dispute. This has been going on for several months and is tied to the introduction of safer cards that have an embedded computer chip instead of the traditional magnetic strip.

Kroger required customers to authorize their chip debit-card transactions with a PIN and routed the transactions to networks other than Visa.

The grocery chain said that Visa said the configuration of its payment terminals didn't comply with Visa's rules and demanded that it route the transactions only through the Visa network.

Kroger said it rang up $29 billion in Visa debit-card transactions last year, noting in the lawsuit that cutting off its ability to accept Visa debit cards "threatened catastrophic consequences for Kroger's business."

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

A Visa spokeswoman declined to comment.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. also sued Visa over PIN debit transactions last month.

--Robin Sidel

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 28, 2016 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

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