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Kit, Thanks very much for including us in your newsletter transmission. It is
very informative, and anyone in our business not receiving this letter is missing
a lot of useful information. Please keep up the good work. Len Vining, Delta Leasing
Company
DeltaLeasingCo@aol.com (
Thank you. We do not add anyone to our newsletter list, unless they specifically
request it. I am told the newsletter is sent around by others. We invite that.
We invite those in the leasing industry to participate. Thank you again for your
kind comments---editor )
CIT CIO Is Named President of Technology Division
LIVINGSTON, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 31, 2000--CIT Equipment Financing, a unit
of The CIT Group, Inc. (NYSE:CIT; TSE:CIT.U), and one of the largest equipment
financing companies in the U.S., has named John J. Fischer, Jr. President of Technology
Financing, a $5 billion unit headquartered in Livingston, NJ.
"We are taking all of the technology financing businesses and consolidating them
under John," said Robert J. Merritt, Group CEO of CIT Equipment Financing. "For
the past 25 years, John's career has focused on evaluating, selecting, purchasing
and installing a broad range of software and computer equipment. He is intimately
familiar with technology and understands both the business needs for this equipment
and the financial decisions that drive the acquisition of this equipment. He is
the ideal candidate to manage the integration of these businesses and drive them
to greater levels of success."
For the past eight years, Fischer, 48, served as CIT's Chief Information Office
and Executive Vice President. In that position, he was responsible for all of
CIT's information technology initiatives, including implementing corporate-wide
networks, revamping all major application suites, systems implementation and upgrading
the technology support team. In
1999, for the second consecutive year, Fischer and his IT team helped CIT achieve
recognition by Information Week as the No. 1 technology innovator in the financial
services industry worldwide. Fischer was also selected as one of the "Premier
100 IT Leaders for 2000" by ComputerWorld.
Prior to joining CIT, Fischer was CIO of the New York Stock Exchange where he
was responsible for upgrading the exchange's capacity to handle the two billion
share day. He was also Manager of Application Systems at Smith Barney.
Fischer earned a B.S. from Fordham University, an MBA in Business and Systems
from Boston University and is a graduate of The Wharton School Advanced Management
Program. An active member of the community, Fischer is Chairman of the Advisory
Board of New Jersey Institute of Technology's College of Science and Liberal Arts.
He is also on the Atlantic Health System's Information Systems Board Advisory
Committee, the Board of Advisors for the Eric Johnson House, a home for indigent
HIV patients, The Conference Board's Information Management Council and a member
of Cancer Care of New Jersey.
He lives with his wife Arlene in Mendham, NJ with their two children Alexandra
and Johnny. CIT
Equipment Financing offers companies a wide variety of financial solutions including
equipment leasing and financing and small business lending. It is an operating
group of The CIT Group (NYSE:CIT, TSE: CIT.U). With $53 billion in managed assets,
The CIT Group (www.cit.com) is one of the world's largest commercial and consumer
finance organizations. CONTACT:
Stanton Crenshaw Communications George
Sopko, 212/780-1900
George@stanton-crenshaw.com
Gateway
Expands Leasing Program for Start-ups By
Ian Fried, CNET News.com While
some companies might be thinking twice about extending additional credit to new
Internet companies, Gateway plans to expand its leasing program to target e-businesses
too young to qualify for traditional lending programs. Gateway
plans to announce its eBusiness Accelerator Leasing program, an initiative that
would lease up to $1 million in computing gear and services to new Internet companies
that have at least one round of funding.
"Many customers that are in this niche don't fit the conservative standards, such
as having been in business for two or three years," said Tony Montemurro, senior
manager of Gateway's business finance program.
Expanding its business leasing program is part of Gateway's efforts to expand
"beyond the box" revenue. The move also comes after Gateway posted disappointing
results for its business unit. To
decide whether a company gets financing--and how much--Gateway will take a look
at a company's executive team, funding and financial performance. Companies chosen
will get from $10,000 and $1 million worth of products financed over anywhere
from one to five years. In
some cases, Gateway may make getting a stake in the company a condition of lending.
Still, Montemurro said the program is more lenient than ones from rivals such
as Compaq Computer because there are no membership fees or commitments to a particular
platform. Montemurro
said the program was spurred, in part, by the current downturn in funding for
Internet ventures. More customers were asking for help, he said. "We certainly
see customers and prospective customers on a daily business whose models we believe
in," he said. "We'd really like to help them through the hiccup."
Gateway apparently is comfortable with the added risk. "They
have a (risk structure) that, based on all of our analyses, we're comfortable
with," Montemurro said. July 31, 2000 "LeaseNOW
2000 is free to capital equipment vendors, franchisers, system integrators, and
manufacturer's representatives who would like to use LeaseNOW,Inc. as their leasing
company. LeaseNOW also offers an affiliation to lease brokers that will allow
them to distribute LeaseNOW 2000, free of charge to their vendors. LeaseNOW does
not require any payment for the software but there are minimum funding levels
that must be achieved to be retained as an affiliate in good standing. LeaseNOW
also requires that any transaction that is submitted and approved through LeaseNOW
2000 be funded by LeaseNOW, Inc. LeaseNOW will terminate a affiliate for violating
this covenant of the agreement.
LeaseNOW, Inc. will assign a unique source code to each vendor or affiliate that
identifies electronically submitted and approved applications and credits them
to the proper parties. Users with Adobe 4.0 can also print to the .PDF file format
and e-mail a completed set of documents to their customers. LeaseNOW documentation
staff will also prepare and e-mail documents. The LeaseNOW 2000 documentation
module is totally secure because it uses "images" that can only be viewed. The
program automatically merges the information from the LeaseNOW 2000 interface.
The completed documents can be previewed and then printed to a printer or .PDF
format for distribution." We have also added a toll free number for the "dial
up" connection and will still provide an internet connection through our server
in the event that the user is away from their office but able to get to a phone
line.
You may also want to use some of the following on the bandwidth comments: We have
recently added T-1 service and channelized it for our long distance and data access.
We identified a pretty cool hardware solution to accomplish this. We bought a
piece of equipment called a T-1 integrator from Vina Technologies (a Bay area
company) The equipment was about $4,000.00 but the payback from reduced long distance
charges alone more than offsets the cost in a few months. In addition (this is
the good part) the Vina box "emulates" analog phone service in your building or
office. It literally acts like a mini phone switch. The T-1 line goes into it
as digital and comes out as analog on the other end so you don't have to upgrade
your current phone system. The T-1 integrator also performs all of the routing
functions and CSU/DSU. I was able to disconnect and sell my Cisco 2501 router
and my Kentrox CSU/DSU to offset the cost. I ordered the T-1 line from MCI/WorldCom
at a cost of $690.00 per month. This is not a fractional T-1 but 24 full channels.
I don't know about other parts of the country but around here that's a great price.
We have reserve the last six channels of the T-1 to add IVR (integrated voice
response) capability to our website and software. When that's complete our customers
and software users will be able to connect to us using internet telephony. Our
phone system, which is a software based PBX that runs on an NT network, is capable
of acting as an internet telephony gateway. The entire project cost approximate
$7,000.00. Most of my network integrator friends told me it couldn't be done or
it couldn't be done for less that $25,000.00. Before the Vina T-1 integrator the
only way to channelize a T-1 was to use a high end Cisco router. Even with that
solution there was no way to emulate an analog signal. The whole thing had to
be digital and the digital cards from dialogic are expensive. ( about $6K apiece
for a 24 channel T-1) To really make this pay your long distance bills should
be around $1800-$2000 per month. Vina is however coming out with an integrator
for DSL lines that will be geared to small and home based businesses. This is
an excellent piece of equipment and a great technological solution for staying
competitive with our much bigger brothers who have far more to spend on such projects.
Thanks Bob Rodi drlease@leasenow.com Manual
is available in .pdf at our website
http://www.leasingnews.org/articles.htm
www.leasingnews.org
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