Western Union has taken of 451st position in the rating Fortune 500 in 2009, having moved from 473rd line in 2008. As a result of 2011, net income of Western Union has increased by 28% to $ 1.165 billion, the company reported. In 1877, starting from September, New York City residents began to have the opportunity to check the time on clock with the "time ball", located on the roof of constructed in the same year a new corporate headquarters - Western Union Building. In October 2006 the company made an initial public offering of shares on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming independent from First Data company. By 1861 Western Union telegraph lines entangled the whole America. It's time to explore Europe. In 1864, fearing the laying of long underwater lines, Western Union offered to carry out laying of telegraph lines to Europe through the Russian Alaska under the narrow Bering Strait and then to Siberia with branching in the major cities of Europe. In 1879 Western Union left the telephone business after losing a lawsuit against Alexander Graham Bell - the patent holder on the phone. The Western Union Company uses the most up to date technologies and its unique worldwide computer network that allows to carry out quick money transfers payments in more than 190 countries around the world. In the summer of 1990 top managers of the Western Union Company spent day and night in the main office in Englewood (Colorado, USA). They needed to meet the challenge: to save the Western Union from bankruptcy, paying off the debts of the company millions of dollars. Sibley, the founder of Western Union, did not build a new telegraph lines, and persuaded the other players to join. American Telegraph Company, however, still had to buy it.