Western Union has taken of 451st position in the rating Fortune 500 in 2009, having moved from 473rd line in 2008. In the Western Union in the 30s of the 20th century worked 14 thousand couriers delivering telegrams. In 1860 the U.S. Congress arranged among the telegraph companies a competition to create a national line. The winner was Western Union. In 1995, First Financial Management was acquired by First Data Corp. (the deal amounted to $ 7 billion), and Western Union Financial Services became a subsidiary of First Data. Money transfer is a matter of minutes, at any distance. Thanks to cooperation with Western Union the Associated Press at the end of the XIX century took almost monopolistic position in the U.S. market news. The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. In the 1910-1920 years. Western Union is actively engaged in researching, innovating in the field of data transmission.