NetGain Technologies gets outside funding
NetGain Technologies, a Lexington, Kentucky-based IT provider which operates one of its six offices in Chattanooga, has received its first outside investment capital in its 34-year history from Evergreen Services Group, a family of leading managed IT services providers across the U.S.
NetGain will continue to operate independently under its leadership team.
“This is an incredible opportunity for our business,” said Jason Jacobson, CEO of NetGain Technologies. “Evergreen’s approach to investing in companies for the long-term and allowing them to operate independently, gives us confidence that our brand, customers, and employees will flourish with the Evergreen investment.”
NetGain Technologies monitors, manages, and maintains the systems and networks that support over 10,000 computer users across the region. The Evergreen investment will empower NetGain Technologies to reignite its acquisition strategy, while doubling down on client happiness, said Ramsey Sahyoun, Evergreen’s Head of M&A.
Altria nears deal with e-cigarette maker Juul
E-cigarette maker Juul, which has vowed to make cigarettes obsolete, is near to inking a deal to become business partners with Altria, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies.
The union entails cigarette giant Altria investing $12.8 billion for a 35 percent stake in Juul, at a $38 billion valuation, according to two people briefed on the negotiations.
The boards of the two companies each plan to meet Wednesday afternoon to consider the deal, according to one of the people.
The deal would give Juul access to Altria’s shelf space in convenience stores and its marketing prowess, and the possibility of putting a mention of its products and coupons into Marlboro cigarette packages.
Juul is under scrutiny from public health officials and the Food and Drug Administration for an explosion in the number of teenagers vaping with its products after a youth-oriented marketing campaign. The San Francisco-based company has contended teenage use was an unintended byproduct of its efforts to create an alternative to cigarettes.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau drops name change
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has decided to abandon a controversial renaming plan, in one of the first big decisions by its new permanent director.
The CFPB no longer wants to call itself the “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection,” a change that had been sought by Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s acting director of the bureau. The decision was announced in an email by new director Kathy Kraninger on Wednesday, who took over earlier this month.
The CFPB was created by the Dodd-Frank Act, the law that rewrote the rules governing the banking and financial system after the 2008 financial crisis. The bureau was called the “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection” in the law, but the CFPB has never referred to itself that way. Mulvaney argued the renaming was just following the letter of the law.
Kraninger cited the cost of renaming the bureau as well as years of branding and identification the CFPB had built up over the last decade. The banking industry publishes millions of disclosures and paperwork for consumers and regulators that referred to the CFPB every year, and reprinting those documents could have been a significant cost.
“Many of us have legal names but use nicknames without much confusion. My birth certificate says Kathleen, but I also answer to Kathy. I think we can do the same here. I believe this decision is most efficient and effective for our continued work together,” Kraninger said in her email.
The CFPB will still use the “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection” in some formal situations, like reports to Congress. But the bureau’s public image will be the CFPB, Kraninger said.