Western Union has taken of 451st position in the rating Fortune 500 in 2009, having moved from 473rd line in 2008. 1980 - for the first time in the history of Western Union revenues from money transfers exceeded the income from the telegraph service. 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. Separation of the companies had two objectives: first, to give Western Union the opportunity to develop more intensively, and secondly, to help First Data to return to its original activity (in 1992 the company separated from the payment system of American Express as an independent financial services company). One of the common kinds of money transfer is a transfer via the international system of Western Union. Western Union incomes for 2007 have made $4,9 billion US dollars, and the quantity of transactions has made 572 million. 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.