t the end of September, First Data Corp. completed the spinoff of Western Union, enabling the venerable telegraph company - founded in 1851 - to go public on Oct. 4. Western Union stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "WU" and is a member of Standard & Poor's 500 Index. At press time, WU was trading between $18 and $20 per share.

With 271,000 locations worldwide, Western Union is the largest money-transfer network. It is bigger than its closest competitor, MoneyGram (89,000 locations), or any other retail chain, according to Analyst Tien-tsin Huang of JPMorgan. By comparison, McDonald's has only 31,886 restaurants.