Investors of FireEye (NASDAQ: FEYE) are off to a great start in 2014.
On Friday, cyber security firm FireEye announced it has acquired Mandiant, a computer forensics specialist firm in a $1.05 billion deal.
Mandiant is most famous for releasing a report in February 2013 documenting evidence of cyber attacks by a secretive Chinese military unit (known as APT1) on U.S. companies.
The acquisition brings together two of the most respected executives in the cyber security industry.
FireEye's Dave DeWalt a former chief executive at McAfee has over 25 years of industry experience. Mandiant's Kevin Mandia is a retired military cyber-crime investigator, who revealed to the world a 76 page report based on seven years of research detailing the worldwide scope of Chinese government sanctioned hacking.
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The two companies have worked together in the past and have entered a technology development agreement making it easier to deploy their products together. DeWalt previously referred to Mandiant's team of experts as being "Navy 'cyber' Seals." The majority of Mandiant's staff consists of retired intelligence and law enforcement agents specializing in computer forensics.
Raising guidance
FireEye has yet to become a profitable company, but raised its guidance following the acquisition announcement.
The company raised its fourth quarter 2013 guidance with billings now pegged at $95 million to $100 million, compared to a previous guidance in the $82 million to $86 million range. The company is also projecting higher revenues in a $55 million to $57 million range from a previous projection of $52 million to $54 million.
FireEye also raised its 2014 outlook, which includes the Mandiant acquisition. The company sees full-year billings in a $540 million to $560 million range, higher than previous estimates of $350 million to $370 million. Revenue projections now stand at $400 million to $410 million, up from previous projections of $240 million to $250 million.
Several analysts viewed the deal as a strategic positive for FireEye. One analyst from Nomura suggested the deal will usher in a wider entry by FireEye into the IPS sector.
Shares of FireEye were trading higher by more than 30 percent in Friday morning's trading action.
Posted-In: APT1 Chinese Hacking Cybersecurity DaveDeWAlt FireEye Kevin Mandia Mandiant McAfeeNews Contracts Management Hot Markets Best of Benzinga
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Gerald Herber/AP Student loans have become an increasingly large portion of the debt burden that Americans face. During the past six years, consumers have paid down their outstanding balances on most forms of debt, including mortgages, credit cards and auto loans, according to the New York Federal Reserve. But student loan balances have continued to increase. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau noted earlier this year that outstanding student debt would shortly hit the $1.2 trillion mark. Most of the loans that students take are federal government loans, with various features that can include subsidies for interest payments while you're in school, fixed interest rates throughout the life of your loan, and opportunities for deferments, forbearance, and even outright loan forgiveness under certain circumstances. But even though private student loans represent a small portion of the overall loan market -- about 14 percent, according to figures from the CFPB -- the lenders that offer private loans have gotten a number of complaints from borrowers citing various problems. Let's take a look at the CFPB report that goes through types of trouble borrowers have had recently with their student lenders to find some key conclusions. 1. Lenders Want Your Business. For the most part, few borrowers cited any problems with actually a private student loan. Just 4 percent of the complaints to the CFPB had to do with obtaining loans, strongly suggesting that most of those who need financing aren't having banks turn them away. Lenders have good reasons to prefer student loans. Unlike most other forms of debt, student loans give creditors protection against discharge in bankruptcy, meaning that borrowers often have to repay their student debt even if they go bankrupt and have other debts wiped out. 2. Competition Is Limited. Looking at which lenders got the most complaints, Sallie Mae (SLM) was the winner by far, with nearly 800 complaints representing almost 40 percent of the total complaints received during the report's six-month scope. That's more than four times what the No. 2 lender received. Wells Fargo (WFC) and Discover Financial (DFS) also had more than 100 complaints each. These numbers reflect just how concentrated the market is for private student loans. Only a small number of lenders control a large portion of the industry's overall market share, according to the report. 3. Repayment Problems Are Paramount. The largest group of borrowers' complaints focused on the inability to get their lenders to agree to modifications of their loan terms. Unlike federal loans, many of which have built-in safeguards aimed at helping those in need avoid complete default, private loan borrowers often lack the right to reduce monthly payments when they're under financial stress. Moreover, some borrowers argue that their lenders haven't given them more favorable terms, such as lower interest rates, once they've built up a more favorable credit history than they had when they first took out their loans. In addition, some complaints focused on payment processing that created additional fees. For instance, when borrowers paid only a portion of the amount due on their loans, some lenders divided up the underpaid amount equally across each individual outstanding loan, resulting in far more fees than if the lender had used the payment to cover as many minimum payments as possible. Even borrowers who were able to repay their loans on time, in full, and according to their original terms had some troubles. Difficulty in having payments on multiple loans accurately applied to each required payment resulted in many complaints. In particular, when borrowers made payments that were above the minimum required monthly amount, lenders sometimes failed to apply the extra amount in the way that was most advantageous to the borrower. Moreover, promises from lenders that co-signers would be taken off loans after a certain number of payments weren't always kept, with modifications to policies having been made in some cases even after students got the loan. Be Careful With Private Loans These problems are just a few of the reasons why private student loans should generally be your last resort when it comes to financing a college education. With unattractive terms that usually make these loans more costly, the complaints about private lenders merely add insult to the injury of having to go into debt for education in the first place.
“The independent RIA industry is a growing, $3.2 trillion market that continues to attract fiduciary-minded wealth managers," said Rudy Adolf (left), founder and CEO of Focus, in a press release. "As a market leader, Focus is excited about Centerbridge’s investment in the company as it further validates our model and the growth potential of our company and the industry as a whole.”
And from the looks of what is taking shape among pipeline administrators, tanker companies, port authorities, and railways, the broad-based assumption is that this decades-old policy will be revised soon. Local officials in port cities throughout the Pacific Northwest are counting on it.
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) has been upgraded from “Hold” to “Buy” at Stifel Nicolaus as visibility is improving. The firm has a $155 price target on HUM, suggesting a 25% upside from Thursday’s closing price of $124.35. HUM has a dividend yield of 0.90%.
Hointer/APA woman demonstrates shopping technology at a store called Hointer in Seattle. NEW YORK -- When it comes to shopping, more Americans are skipping the stores and pulling out their smartphones and tablets. Still, there's more on the horizon for shopping than just point-and-clicking. No one thinks physical stores are going away permanently. But because of the frenetic pace of advances in technology and online shopping, the stores that remain will likely offer amenities and services that are more about experiences and less about selling a product. Think: Apple's (AAPL) stores. Among the things industry watchers are envisioning are holograms in dressing rooms that will allow shoppers to try on clothes without getting undressed. Their homes will be equipped with smart technology that will order light bulbs before they go dark. And they'll be able to print out a full version of coffee cups and other products using 3-D technology in stores. "Physical shopping will become a lot more fun because it's going to have to be," retail futurist Doug Stephens says. More Services Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru says stores of the future will be more about services, like day care, veterinary services and beauty services. Services that connect online and offline shopping could increase as well, with more drive-thru pickup and order-online, pick-up-in-store services. Checkout also will be self-service or with cashiers using computer tablets. Some stores are taking self-service further: A store in Seattle called Hointer displays clothing not in piles or on racks but as one piece hanging at a time, like a gallery. Shoppers just touch their smartphones to a coded tag on the item and then select a color and size on their phone. Technology in the store keeps track of the items, and by the time a shopper is ready to try them on, they're already at the dressing room. If the shopper doesn't like an item, he tosses it down a chute, which automatically removes the item from the shopper's online shopping cart. The shopper keeps the items that he or she wants, which are purchased automatically when leaving the store, no checkout involved. Nadia Shouraboura, Hointer's CEO, says once shoppers get used to the process, they're hooked. On-Demand Coupons Some stores, including British retailer Tesco and drugstore Duane Reade, now are testing beacons, Bluetooth-enabled devices that can communicate directly with your cellphone to offer discounts, direct you to a desired product in a store or enable you to pay remotely. For example, you can walk into a drugstore where you normally buy face cream. The beacon would recognize your smartphone, connect it with past purchasing history and send you a text or email with a coupon for the cream. "The more we know about customers ... you can use promotions on not a macro level but a micro level," says Kasey Lobaugh, chief retail innovation officer at Deloitte Consulting. A store could offer a mother 20 percent off on Mother's Day, for example, or offer frequent buyers of paper towels a discount on bulk purchases. 3-D Printing Within 10 years, 3-D printing could make a major disruption in retail, Deloitte's Lobaugh predicts. Take a simple item like a coffee cup. Instead of producing one in China, transporting it and distributing it to retail stores, you could just download the code for the coffee cup and 3-D print it at a retail outlet or in your own home. "That starts a dramatic change in terms of the structure of retail," Lobaugh said. And while 3-D printing today is primarily plastic, Lobaugh says there are tests at places like MIT Media Lab and elsewhere with other materials, including fabric. Right now a few stores offer rudimentary 3-D-printing services, but they are very limited. He predicts the shift will come in 10 to 20 years. Order Yourself Steve Yankovich, head of innovation for eBay (EBAY), thinks someday buying household supplies won't take any effort at all. He says someday a connected home could be able to use previous customer history and real-time data the house records to sense when a light bulb burns out, for example, and order a new one automatically. Or a washing machine will order more detergent when it runs low. "A box could show up on porch with this disparate set of 10 things the connected home and eBay determined you needed to keep things running smoothly," he says. "It's called zero-effort commerce." Holograms EBay recently bought PhiSix, a company working on creating life-size 3-D models of clothing that can be used in dressing rooms to instantly try on different colors of clothing or different styles. You can see 30 or 40 items of clothing realistically without physically trying them on. EBay's Yankovich says the technology can be used in a virtual dressing room as well, showing what the clothes look like when you are, say, walking down the street or hitting a golf club. Some companies have been testing this already. British digital agency Engage created a Virtual Style Pod that scanned shoppers and created a life-size image onto which luxury clothing from brands like Alexander McQueen and DKNY were projected. The Pod was displayed in shopping centers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
Alamy Personal finance author Barbara Stanny realized she was earning too little money when she interviewed women bringing home six figures or more for one of her books. "Of the first 15, three of them were writers. It was such an empowering thing for me to see. There were people doing what I was doing, but they were making more," she recalls. She committed to follow their lead, and before she finished her book, she had started earning six figures herself. Earning too little money, which Stanny defines as earning less than you need or desire, despite efforts to do otherwise, is a problem so common that Stanny started giving workshops on the topic. Eventually, it became the subject of her next book, "Overcoming Underearning." Others have also tackled the issue: Underearners Anonymous, a support group based on a 12-step program, is dedicated to helping people who find themselves trapped in a low-income cycle. And Bari Tessler Linden, a popular financial therapist, addresses the topic in her work, too. Tom Anderson, a freelance writer based in New York, wrote about visiting an Underearners Anonymous meeting for the financial website LearnVest earlier this year. "The median age was mid-40s, and it was a pretty diverse bunch of people from all different socioeconomic backgrounds," he told U.S. News. The session focused on improving time management skills, goal setting and being more career focused, he says. After the meeting, he says, "I did adjust my own expectations for my finances and what revenue targets I wanted to hit." Anderson says he would recommend the experience to anyone who is comfortable with the spiritual side of 12-step programs and who is not doing a good job of valuing their time, which often has a negative impact on earning power. (Underearners Anonymous did not respond to requests for comment.) Financial therapist Linden says in order to overcome her own struggle with underearning (in her 20s, she worked in hospice and as a counselor, and she couldn't afford organic food), she had to first learn to value herself better. "I had to do a lot of work on cultivating my value and what this means to me," she says. She also had to learn that it was OK to want to earn more money. "I thought if I did good work, money would just appear. But it also did not feel spiritual to me to strive for money," she says. Still, she knew she had to find a way to earn more. So she took on extra overnight shifts at hospice, but was still stuck earning less than $2,000 a month. She took on a second job, and eventually earned enough for some small indulgences, like chocolate. Then, she learned about bookkeeping, took on clients and started earning more money. Today, she's built an online business based around her financial therapy and coaching work that allows her to earn a six-figure income. "It's about the numbers, but of course it's also about having a deeply meaningful and joyful life, giving amazing work to the world and having a great lifestyle. And we all define that in our own ways," she says. As for Stanny, she says her own underearning struggles grew out of larger money issues. She recalls her father, one of the founders of H&R Block (HRB), teaching her little about smart money management. "The only thing my father ever told me was, 'Don't worry,'" she says. Later, her husband, a compulsive gambler, created a new set of financial problems for her. She finally decided she had to learn how to manage (and make) her own money. Overcoming underearning is all about shifting your thinking, Stanny says. "We tend to push our financial problems under the rug and ignore our problems and think they'll go away. [Instead,] I made a decision: I'm going to overcome underearning," Stanny says. Making that kind of mental shift can be uncomfortable, she adds, but it's essential for making a significant change. The biggest lesson she learned from high earners, she says, is to say yes to opportunities. "If any opportunity comes along, as long as it's not illegal or immoral, they just say 'yes,'" she says of high earners. Even if something makes them nervous, like a new speaking gig, high-earners welcome the opportunity. To overcome her own under-earning trap, Stanny started raising her speaking fees. It made her uncomfortable, and for the first three months, she got few takers, but eventually, she started booking gigs at her higher rate. "I knew I deserved to earn more for no other reason than I'm worth it," Stanny says. Cultivating that sense of self-worth is crucial for overcoming underearning.
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Mark Lennihan/Associated Press Ellen Kullman, chair of the board and chief executive officer of DuPont