Subject: Thursday Morning Briefing
From: Talk Business <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 May 2016 11:37:21 +0000
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MILLENNIALS RESHAPING THE BANKING WORLD, MORE RESPONSIBLE THAN THEIR PARENTS: Bankers and bank marketers around Arkansas offer their thoughts on how the industry is adapting its business products to serve the growing and influential Milliennial market.

While the majority of banking activity, deposits, withdrawals and bill paying are done online or through mobile banking options, bank research indicates that Millennials use bank branches as resources for professional advice and services such as retirement planning or budgeting for a home purchase. Millennials also don’t mind asking for banking perks such as free checking, identity theft protection, free ATM usage and user friendly mobile apps, survey data shows. Read more plus insight from several Arkansas bank experts at this link (http://talkbusiness.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4403c46412536341322b6e88c&id=f5d72cd710&e=b5f4886f5f) .

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LITTLE ROCK TECH PARK TAB AT $13.2 MILLION AS DOWNTOWN INCUBATOR PROJECT STAYS ON SCHEDULE: The Little Rock Tech Authority has expended $13.2 million to date on the crucial first phase of the downtown development to attract startups and tech-focused entrepreneurs to Central Arkansas, according to a monthly financial snapshot released Wednesday by the publicly-financed startup and small business incubator.

Most of the dollars, about $12.6 million, have gone to purchase three buildings that will serve as a central hub for the first phase of the downtown development. In other news, Jonesboro-based Ritter Communications won a bid to provide broadband services to the tech park. Also, a financial sector startup incubator launches next week at the Venture Center, another downtown entrepreneurial space. Read more here (http://talkbusiness.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4403c46412536341322b6e88c&id=4815e14b5d&e=b5f4886f5f) .

WAL-MART SUES VISA, SAYS THE CREDIT CARD COMPANY’S DEBIT CARD PROTOCOL IS LESS SECURE: The long and often bitter conflict between retailers and credit card companies continues as Wal-Mart Stores filed suit against Visa in New York state court earlier this week. The Bentonville-based retail giant claims the card processing protocol Visa advocates with Wal-Mart is less secure than the chip-and-pin method the retail and banking industries are widely adopting.

Wal-Mart claims in its filing that Visa is advocating for a riskier method of verification for debit transactions using signatures instead of the chip-and-pin method that has been employed throughout Europe and other parts of the world with the U.S. being one of the last countries to adopt. Read more here (http://talkbusiness.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4403c46412536341322b6e88c&id=5dbeceee48&e=b5f4886f5f) .

THREE PLEAD GUILTY TO FRAUD OF $3.95 MILLION FROM FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF LAWRENCE COUNTY: Brenda Montgomery, 57, of Walnut Ridge, Peggy Sutton, 61, of Biggers, and Cindy Tate, 57, of Walnut Ridge, have all pleaded guilty to a felony information charging them with conspiracy to commit bank fraud. The three admitted to stealing nearly $4 million from First National Bank of Lawrence County, Arkansas, U.S. Attorney Chris Thyer said Wednesday (May 11).

Montgomery and Tate pleaded guilty on Tuesday and Sutton on Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Kristine G. Baker, who will sentence them at a later date. Judge Baker conditionally accepted each defendant’s guilty plea subject to receiving the pre-sentence reports for the defendants. Pursuant to a plea agreement with the United States, each defendant is responsible for $1,317,000 in restitution to the bank. Read more here (http://talkbusiness.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4403c46412536341322b6e88c&id=24a4ab9b02&e=b5f4886f5f) .

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LIBERTARIANS RISING: THIRD PARTY IN ARKANSAS IS TRYING TO BE MORE THAN A THIRD WHEEL - In the last two election cycles, one political party in Arkansas has fielded a full slate of candidates to challenge the Republicans for state and federal offices, and it’s not the Democrats.

Members of the Libertarian Party of Arkansas competed for all state constitutional offices and in all congressional races in 2014 and are on the ballot in all congressional races this year. In the First, Third and Fourth Congressional Districts, Republican incumbents are challenged only by Libertarian opponents.

This will be the third straight election cycle where the party will be fielding candidates below the presidential level. It ran 28 candidates in 2014 and is running 23 this year. But fielding candidates is different than winning elections. Read our deep dive on the Libertarian Party's push this cycle at this link (http://talkbusiness.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4403c46412536341322b6e88c&id=80fedc6c71&e=b5f4886f5f) .

GOV. HUTCHINSON MAKES APPOINTMENTS TO STATE BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS: Gov. Hutchinson announced dozens of appointments to boards and commissions on Wednesday, including new appointments to the State Plant Board, Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission, State Board of Architects, and Arkansas Motor Vehicle Commission. Read a compilation list here (http://talkbusiness.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=4403c46412536341322b6e88c&id=88c9f59cfb&e=b5f4886f5f) .

PULASKI TECH BOARD VOTES TO MERGE WITH UA SYSTEM: Content partner KUAR FM 89.1 News reports the Pulaski Technical College Board of Trustees voted unanimously Wednesday to enter into a partnership agreement with the University of Arkansas System. The UA System Board of Trustees must also vote on whether to approve the merger. The decision comes after UA System Donald Bobbitt presented merger plans to the Pulaski Tech Board at its March 28 meeting. Read more here (http://talkbusiness.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4403c46412536341322b6e88c&id=309fb9bc51&e=b5f4886f5f) .

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DEVELOPER TAYLOR OTWELL ON THE ART OF PROGRAMMING: Taylor Otwell is an Arkansas programmer who has made a global impact very quickly. The Arkansas Tech University graduate is the developer of the most popular PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) framework in the world. After taking his first job, Otwell plunged into a side project where he developed Laravel, an Open Source PHP Framework. The “side project” took off and became a full-time endeavor.

How does Laravel rank compared to its competitors? And how does Otwell view his high-profile role in the programming world? Read his Q&A with TB&P's Startup reporter Todd Jones at this link (http://talkbusiness.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4403c46412536341322b6e88c&id=4a4f7a067d&e=b5f4886f5f) .

PENTAGON UNVEILS NEW EAST COAST INNOVATION HUB TO UPGRADE MILITARY’S TECHNOLOGY NEEDS: Pentagon Chief Ash Carter announced on Wednesday (http://talkbusiness.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4403c46412536341322b6e88c&id=923aaa0ad6&e=b5f4886f5f) (May 11) the formation of a new technology hub to be built in Boston that is aimed at putting innovative technologies into the hands of warfighters. The Department of Defense’s first Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, was unveiled nearly a year ago on the West Coast as a way to get ideas and products from Silicon Valley into the Defense Department quickly. The new East Coast DIUx unit will be led by Raj Khan, an Air Force Reserve F-16 pilot and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and seeded with $30 million in funding.

IBM WATSON TAKES ON CYBERCRIME: IBM Security on Tuesday announced Watson for Cyber Security, a new cloud-based version of the company's cognitive technology trained on the language of security as part of a year-long research project. To further scale the system, IBM will begin working fall with leading universities and their students to further train Watson on the language of cybersecurity.

IBM said training Watson for cybercrime is a critical step in the advancement of cognitive security. Watson is learning the nuances of security research findings and discovering patterns and evidence of hidden cyberattacks and threats that could otherwise be missed, officials said (http://talkbusiness.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4403c46412536341322b6e88c&id=0d728cd469&e=b5f4886f5f) .

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"We won’t lose focus on what our mission here is at Pulaski Technical College. We have been, we will remain a technical college, and we will offer the things and do the things that technical colleges do." - Pulaski Tech Board Chairman Ronald Dedman.

"Both parties aren’t moving,” he said. “If they were going to move, they would have moved decades ago. They have had opportunities. They’ve had candidates that have tried to move them that direction, and both of those parties continue to drift toward a more authoritarian viewpoint of government, and neither one of them show any desire to want to do anything different." - First District Congressional candidate Mark West, a Libertarian.

"Visa has acknowledged in many other countries that chip-and-pin offer greater security. Visa nevertheless has demanded that we allow fraud-prone signature verification for debit transactions in our U.S. stores because Visa stands to make more money processing those transactions." - Wal-Mart spokesman Randy Hargrove.

"We have found that many of our Millennial customers have fond memories of coming to the bank as children, whether it was getting a lollipop as they went through the drive-thru or some other story. The old notion that bank branches will eventually become extinct isn’t what we are seeing today as this group of consumers have told us that nothing takes the place of having someone to talk to for advice on financial matters." - Donna Kimes, senior vice president of Farmers & Merchants Bank of Stuttgart.
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