Bay Area check casher moves to Miami

August 16, 2006 - San Francisco, California

Allied Cash Advance has relocated its corporate headquarters from the Bay Area to Miami, citing the high cost of doing business in California, the company said Wednesday.

The fast-growing company was founded in 1999 with a single location in Northern California.

Today, ACA is one of the nation's largest payday lenders with more than 250 branches in a dozen states.

The move took place in 2005 but the company didn't make an official announcement regarding the move until this week.

The company employs more than 700 people in 13 states.

Allied is a long way from its early days when John Lie-Nielsen and Scott Crockett left their corporate finance positions at Montgomery Securities, now part of Bank of America, to launch the payday lender.

The genesis of Allied grew out of the bankers' careful reading of a payday lender's regulatory filing to go public, which was being handled by a rival investment bank.

The two bankers, whose friendship goes back to their college years, liked what they saw in terms of the profitability of extending short-term loans to school teachers, mechanics and others who sometimes have trouble making ends meet at the end of the month.

The bankers also got bit by the entrepreneurial bug after sitting in countless meetings at Montgomery. "We saw that the person with the most money in the room wasn't necessarily the smartest, but the one who took action," Lie-Nielsen said.

News Source

San Francisco Business Journal, Mark Calvey, Staff Writer

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