By Justin Madubuko, 6 August 2001 11:50
NEWS Centrica, formerly known as British Gas, has agreed to buy HFC Bank's database of Goldfish credit card customers for £85m. The acquisition comes after a long and bitter legal battle between between the former partners in the Goldfish business over rights to one million Goldfish credit cardholders held in the database. The dispute began when Centrica announced in December 2000 that it planned to extend its financial services offering via a joint venture with Lloyds TSB and abandon the venture with HFC. However, a court ruled in June 2001 that US-based HFC could retain customer details of Goldfish. Tess Kershaw, head of media relations at Centrica, said the company had decided to buy out HFC's rights to the database because this would be cheaper than further legal action. Centrica said it wanted to launch the new venture with a range of banking schemes in addition to its credit card operation with Lloyds TSB. At the time of the initial announcement it claimed HFC lacked the "huge UK operation or the experience" possessed by Lloyds. Elements of the new service, which will be known as The Goldfish Bank, will be provided online in the near future. Centrica is currently working to get back up to financial certainty following the instability it experienced in the market as a result of its protracted battle with HFC. The transfer of Goldfish from HFC to Centrica will be made later this year HFC will run the service until the transfer.
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