{"id":678,"date":"2007-02-20T10:14:50","date_gmt":"2007-02-20T18:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=678"},"modified":"2007-02-20T10:18:56","modified_gmt":"2007-02-20T18:18:56","slug":"equifax-to-buy-top-payroll-service-firm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=678","title":{"rendered":"Equifax to buy top payroll-service firm"},"content":{"rendered":"

That was the headline that greeted me when I opened up my Atlanta Journal Constitution<\/a> Business section last Thursday.\u00a0 Right there below the fold.\u00a0 Plain as day.\u00a0 My heart began to race a bit.\u00a0 Who could it be?\u00a0 Equifax is big, certainly.\u00a0 With a $5 billion market capitalization they could probably make a run at quite a few companies; but a \u201ctop firm?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

ADP is THE top firm, but with a $28 billion market cap that would be impossible, right?\u00a0 I mean, I\u2019ve heard of leveraged buyouts, but this is ridiculous.\u00a0 Besides, the 80\u2019s are over.\u00a0 Milliken went to jail, and Gordon Gecko is a fictional character.<\/p>\n

No, it wasn\u2019t ADP (\u201cP\u2019shah \u2013 as if\u201d as my daughter would say).\u00a0 Well Ceridian might be the one.\u00a0 They are smaller than Equifax at a 4.7 billion market cap. It\u2019s be like a merger of equals.\u00a0 Just like Price Waterhouse and C&L were back when they merged.\u00a0 Of course there was that C & L partner who told me \u201cYou\u2019ve been acquired!\u201d \u2013 but that\u2019s a different story and he might be reading.\u00a0 Ceridian had also just announced<\/a>, two days earlier the \u201cExploration Of Alternatives To Enhance Shareholder Value.\u201d\u00a0 Could they move that fast?\u00a0 I doubt it.\u00a0 But no, it wasn\u2019t Ceridian.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it amazing how much the mind can go through between reading the headline and the lead in a story?\u00a0 And to think I had instant recall of all these market cap figures.\u00a0\u00a0 Jason Corsello<\/a>, eat your heart out! \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

So it wasn\u2019t ADP or Ceridian.\u00a0 Who\u2019s left?\u00a0 Paychex?\u00a0 No offense, but do people refer to Paychex as a \u201ctop firm?\u201d\u00a0 I know, I know..I\u2019m showing my ignorance of the small business market.\u00a0 Paychex is a major player.\u00a0 With market capitalization of close to 16 billion, Paychex is over 3 times the size of Ceridian.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t Paychex either.<\/p>\n

So who is this \u201ctop payroll-service firm\u201d being acquired by Equifax?\u00a0 TALX.\u00a0 That\u2019s right: TALX.\u00a0 Now I knew TALX provides some payroll services in the areas of employment and income verification, pay reporting, hiring and employment tax management. But top payroll services firm?\u00a0 I wish headline writers would read the stories fist.<\/p>\n

But seriously, what does this mean?\u00a0 This Equifax press release states the acquisition is aligned with Equifax’s \u201clong-term growth strategy of expanding into new markets and acquiring proprietary data sources.”\u00a0 So Equifax wants the data that TALX has access to.\u00a0 Data like employment history, income information, tax records and the like.\u00a0 Maybe this is a portend of consolidation activity to come in the “payroll services industry”. Maybe Equifax just likes the business model. \u00a0Maybe Big Brother is alive and well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I for one am going to keep an eye out to see where this goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That was the headline that greeted me when I opened up my Atlanta Journal Constitution Business section last Thursday.\u00a0 Right there below the fold.\u00a0 Plain as day.\u00a0 My heart began to race a bit.\u00a0 Who could it be?\u00a0 Equifax is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,2,22,31,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-hr-technology","category-industry-news","category-outsourcing","category-vendors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}