Sightline Acquisition Corp - Kirk Sanford - Residential and Commercial Assets

Our extensive network within the community developed by our management team provides us with significant business opportunities in both residential and commercial asset classes.

In addition to being the Chairman of the Sightline Acquisition Corporation, Kirk Sanford has diverse business interests and background. He was involved for many years in mergers and acquisitions, leverage recapitalization, private equity, initial public offerings and high yield financing.

First Data Corp.'s Western Union and Global Cash Access subsidiaries, along with a company called Infonox, are conducting a pilot in Texas of advanced automated teller machines that let consumers send or transfer funds through Western Union.
The program, currently limited to a few ATMs but set to expand, adds to a growing list of initiatives by technology vendors, processors, and banking companies to make money transfer - particularly to and from foreign countries - more ubiquitous.
These companies are acknowledging that U.S. residents with overseas relatives represent a big opportunity, and developing more convenient and cheaper options.
In May, Bank of America Corp. introduced SafeSend. Registration is free at B of A's branches, and the bank sends money-withdrawal cards to designated people in Mexico. The cards incorporate personal identification numbers and can be used at any ATM connected to Visa's Plus network, though they do not work for point of sale transactions. Bank of America customers pay $10 per transactions, and noncustomers pay $15.
Citigroup Inc.'s online c2it person-to-person payment facilitator charges fees of $10 to $15 for money transfers. Concord EFS of Memphis and MoneyGram are collaborating on a P-to-P offering that uses ATMs, though only domestically so far. And Morgan Beaumont Inc. of Sarasota, Fla., has introduced the Morgan Money Card, a debit/ATM card that it is marketing to Hispanics, Asians, and Russians and that lets people around the world retrieve funds at an ATM.
Fees for Western Union transfers vary by the sum sent and the transfer destination. For example, a customer using the Internet to initiate a transfer from California to Mexico would pay $14.99 for a $300 transfer but $20 for a $400 transfer.
Western Union also has a partnership with 7-Eleven. Users of the roughly 100 Vcom kiosks that 7-Eleven has installed can do money orders and money transfers and cash checks through Certegy Check Services. At 3,300 of 7-Eleven's regular ATMs, people can receive money transfers.
"The backbone of the Western Union money transfer and money order agent network is still the ability to be able to go and do these transactions in a person-to-person manner," a Western Union spokeswoman said. "But technology complements it. A segment of our agent network, such as grocery stores and convenience stores, are looking for technological solutions to be able to offer a broader range of services, and obviously a certain population of consumers are very responsive to using technology."
The Western Union partnership with Infonox and Global Cash, a cash machine vendor, began in December with five machines in retail outlets: four in HEB grocery stores and one at a Kmart. The next phase, which is to run from August through December, will add services like payroll check cashing and Western Union bill payment. Also, 18 more machines will be added, in Phoenix and Las Vegas, in large grocery and convenience stores.
Check cashing customers will need to enroll to use the service. A biometric camera attached to the ATM will photograph first-time users, and the next time the person uses the machine the camera will take another picture and match it against the original.
"The vision of this partnership is to deliver to the market the concept of a self-service financial center in an ATM format and footprint which consumers are already familiar with," said Safwan Shah, the chief executive officer of Infonox, a transaction technology company in Santa Clara, Calif. "The ability to aggregate transactions services results in a huge value proposition for the customer. It is a bank in an ATM. It is a virtual cashier."
Jay Giesen, the senior vice president and general manager for Western Union's alternative distribution division, said that the pilot had been very successful from his company's perspective, and that consumer acceptance levels had been very high. People especially liked the privacy associated with the machines, he said.
These ATMs were not meant to replace Western Union locations, but to complement them, Mr. Giesen said. The ATM program "moves the consumer from a manned to an unmanned environment in a retail setting," but also gives the customer the option of talking directly with a Western Union representatives by phone, he said.
"We continue to look for new ways to service both our retail customers and consumers," Mr. Giesen said.
All services on these enhanced ATMs run on Infonox's Active Payment Platform aggregator. Infonox sells the infrastructure that businesses can use to deploy, aggregate, and manage transaction services through devices including personal computers, POS terminals, and ATMs.
Service providers in the pilot program "can reach more endpoints, the consumer gets more value for his time and money, and the device manufacturers have more to offer," Mr. Shah said.