disambiguation . western union company type public traded as nyse wu s & p 500 component industry financial services founded 1851 ; 165 years ago 1851 in rochester new york united states 1 founder ezra cornell headquarters meridian colorado united states key people jack m. greenberg chairman hikmet ersek president and ceo services wire transfers money orders revenue us 5 542.0 million 2013 2 us 5 664.8 million 2012 2 operating income us 1 107.4 million 2013 2 us 1 330.0 million 2012 2 net income us 798.4 million 2013 2 us 1 025.9 million 2012 2 total assets us 10 121.3 million 2013 3 us 9 465.7 million 2012 2 total equity us 1 104.7 million 2013 3 us 940.6 million 2012 2 number of employees 7 000 4 2010 website www.westernunion.com the western union company is an american financial services and communications company . its north american headquarters is in meridian colorado though the postal designation of nearby englewood is used in its mailing address . up until it discontinued the service in 2006 western union was the best known u.s. company in the business of exchanging telegrams . 5 6 western union has several divisions with products such as person to person money transfer money orders business payments and commercial services . they offered standard cablegrams as well as more cheerful products such as candygrams dollygrams and melodygrams . western union as an industrialized monopoly dominated the telegraph industry in the late 19th century . it was the first communications empire and set a pattern for american style communications businesses as they are known today . neutrality is disputed contents 1 history 1.1 19th century 1.2 20th century 1.3 involvement in early computer networking 1.4 end of telegrams 1.5 acquisitions 2 specific services 2.1 online 2.2 bidpay 2.3 western union mobile 2.4 sending and receiving funds 2.5 transfer fees 2.6 past services 3 sponsorship 4 scam industry and money laundering 4.1 money laundering and terrorist financing 5 connection to military intelligence 5.1 blocked transactions 6 see also 7 alternative providers 8 references 9 further reading 10 external links history edit 19th century edit in 1851 the new york and mississippi valley printing telegraph company was organized in rochester new york by samuel l. selden hiram sibley and others with the goal of creating one great telegraph system with unified and efficient operations . meanwhile ezra cornell had bought back one of his bankrupt companies and renamed it the new york & western union telegraph company . originally fierce competitors by 1856 1 both groups were finally convinced that consolidation was their only alternative for progress . the merged company was named the western union telegraph company at cornell s insistence and western union was born . 7 western union bought out smaller companies rapidly and by 1860 its lines reached from the east coast to the mississippi river and from the great lakes to the ohio river . in 1861 it opened the first transcontinental telegraph . in 1865 it formed the russian american telegraph in an attempt to link america to europe via alaska into siberia to moscow this project was abandoned in 1867 . the company enjoyed phenomenal growth during the next few years . under the leadership of presidents jeptha wade and william orton its capitalization rose from 385 700 in 1858 to 41 million in 1876 . however it was top heavy with stock issues and faced growing competition from several firms especially the atlantic and pacific telegraph company itself taken over by financier jay gould in 1875 . 8 196 201 in 1881 gould took control of western union . 9 10 wilbur bold a 12 year old western union messenger boy tampa florida 1911 . it introduced the first stock ticker in 1866 and a standardized time service in 1870 . the next year 1871 the company introduced its money transfer service based on its extensive telegraph network . in 1879 western union left the telephone business having lost a patent lawsuit with bell telephone company . 11 as the telephone replaced the telegraph money transfer would become its primary business . when the dow jones transportation average stock market index for the new york stock exchange nyse was created in 1884 western union was one of the original eleven all american companies tracked . by 1900 western union operated a million miles of telegraph lines and two international undersea cables . 20th century edit the company continued to grow acquiring more than 500 smaller competitors . its monopoly power was almost complete in 1943 when it bought postal telegraph inc. its chief rival . former headquarters of wu located at 60 hudson new york ny usa in the early and middle 20th century in 1914 western union offered the first charge card for consumers ; in 1923 it introduced teletypewriters to join its branches . singing telegrams followed in 1933 intercity fax in 1935 and commercial intercity microwave communications in 1943 . in 1958 it began offering telex service to customers in new york city . 12 western union introduced the candygram in the 1960s a box of chocolates accompanying a telegram featured in a commercial with the rotund don wilson . on the 1970s version of let s make a deal hosted by monty hall western union candygrams with a cash message inside were offered to contestants as a prize during a deal . in 1964 western union initiated a transcontinental microwave system to replace land lines . during world war ii families with sons in military service dreaded the western union boy on his bicycle to arrive at their home with a telegram from the war department or the navy department . the message began the secretary of war for soldiers and airmen or secretary of navy for sailors and marines regrets to inform you that name rank and serial number of the man in the military service was killed in action or missing in action . advertisement for western union tourate telegram service 1939 western union became the first american telecommunications corporation to maintain its own fleet of geosynchronous communications satellites starting in 1974 . the fleet of satellites called westar carried communications within the western union company for telegram and mailgram message data to western union bureaus nationwide . it also handled traffic for its telex and twx telex ii services . the westar satellites transponders were also leased by other companies for relaying video voice data and facsimile fax transmissions . in 1963 western union organized its international cable system properties and its right of way for connecting international telegraph lines into a separate company called western union international wui which it divested that year to american securities . in 1983 american securities sold wui to mci communications which renamed it to mci international and moved its headquarters from new york city to rye brook new york . in the 1970s wui installed and leased to the u.s. department of defense dod dedicated 50 kbps high speed telecommunications facilities between the continental u.s. and hawaii germany and the united kingdom to provide a test bed for the dod s advanced research projects agency arpa . this test bed provided arpa with a proof of concept for the technology of packet switching which later became the internet . in 1976 western union partnered with e. f. hutton & co. . in 1981 western union purchased a fifty percent interest in airfone . it sold airfone to gte in 1986 for 39 million in cash . 13 because of declining profits and mounting debts western union slowly began to divest itself of telecommunications based assets starting in the early 1980s . because of deregulation at the time western union began sending money outside the country re inventing itself as the fastest way to send money worldwide and expanding its agent locations internationally . 14 example of a western union telegram 1959 . note that the message text is a continuous strip of paper which was cut and glued to the telegram form . in 1987 investor bennett s. lebow acquired control of western union through an outside of chapter 11 process that was a complex leveraged recapitalization . the transaction was backed by a total of 900 million in high yield bonds and preferred stock underwritten by michael milken s group at drexel burnham lambert as part of an exchange offer . lebow installed robert j. amman as president and ceo who led a complete strategic operational and balance sheet restructuring of the company over the subsequent 6 years . mr. amman executed a strategy of redirecting western union from being an asset based provider of communications services with a money transfer business as a large but less important part of the business into being a provider of consumer based money transfer financial services . in so doing mr. amman ran the company as two separate companies . one business consisted of the money transfer business which was funded and operated to take advantage of the significant growth opportunity . the second unit consisted of all the non strategic communications assets such as the long distance analog voice network satellite business and undersea cable assets . in the 3 year period through 1990 mr. amman was supported by robert a. schriesheim also installed by mr. lebow as a special advisor who oversaw the divestiture of the four non strategic telecommunications assets for about 280 million . the official name of the corporation was changed to new valley corporation in 1991 just in time for that entity to seek bankruptcy protection as part of mr. amman s strategy to eliminate the overleveraged balance sheet while continuing to grow the money transfer business . the name change was taken to shield the western union name from being dragged through the proceedings and the bad pr that would cause . 15 under the day to day leadership of robert j. amman and the backing of lebow the company s value increased dramatically through its years operating under chapter 11 . following various restructurings that included negotiations with carl icahn who became a large bond holder mr. amman engineered the sale of new valley in a bankruptcy auction to first financial management corporation in 1994 for 1.2 billion where he became vice chairman and a year later merged with first data corporation in a 6 billion transaction . on january 26 2006 first data corporation announced plans to spin western union off as an independent publicly traded company . western union s focus will remain money transfers . the next day western union announced that it would cease offering telegram transmission and delivery 16 the product most associated with the company throughout its history . this was however not the original western union telegram service but a new service of first data under the western union banner ; the original telegram service was sold off after new valley corporation s bankruptcy and now operates as itelegram . the spin off was completed september 29 2006 and western union became an independent publicly traded company again . involvement in early computer networking edit western union telegrams were transmitted through a store and forward message switching system . early versions were manual telegraph systems . later systems using teleprinters were semi automatic using punched paper tape to receive store and retransmit messages . plan 55 a western union s last paper tape based switching system 1948 1976 was fully automatic with automatic routing . western union was a prime contractor in the automatic digital network autodin program . autodin a military application for communication was first developed in the 1960s and became the precursor to the modern internet in the 1990s . the defense message system dms replaced autodin in 2000 . autodin originally named comlognet was a highly reliable service that operated at 99.99 % availability using mechanical punched card readers and tab machines to send and receive data over leased lines