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$72M IPO for MAC Card boss Bipin Shah's Universal

Universal Business Payment Solutions Acquisition will buy small-business payment services

Bipin Shah, the Main Line bank tech genius who set up MAC Card for the old CoreStates Bank, has raised $72 million, at $6 a share in an initial public stock offering for his new company, Universal Business Payment Solutions Acquisition Corp., which hopes to buy and finance payment services for small businesses.

Shah grew rich in the 1990s after leaving CoreStates (where he had been on a short list of potential CEOs) when he went on to organize the Gensar restaurant-payment system and Genpass MoneyPass. At Universal his top lieutenant will be his old CoreStates and Genpass aide Peter B. Davidson, currently ceo of Brooks FI Solutions LLC.

Directors include some financial heavy hitters from Philadelphia and New York: former Citicorp president Richard S. Braddock; former Chase Manhattan, Meritor PSFS and Guggenheim Securities executive Frederick S. Hammer; investor Jonathan M. Lubert, a son of Philadelphia real estate and buyout-fund manager Ira Lubert; former CoreStates executive Robert B. Palmer; and former Prudential Financial chairman Arthur F. Ryan.
James A. Lebovitz, Thomas Friedman and their associates at Philadelphia law firm Dechert LLP advised Shah's group in the sale.