Citigroup buying two big credit card lines

NEW YORK, June 3 (UPI) -- New York's Citigroup Inc. will pay about $760 million for the credit-card businesses of Federated Department Stores Inc. and May Department Stores Co.

The big bank agreed to take more than $4.4 billion of credit-card receivables from Federated in two phases, and $2.2 billion in receivables from May, following Federated's planned purchase of May, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Federated said it intends to use the deal's proceeds to fund the May acquisition or to repay acquisition-related debt. Further cash flow from the deal may be used to repurchase Federated stock, it said.

Together, Federated and May portfolios contain about 17 million active accounts.