Unusual decision

CheckFree Holdings chief financial officer Allen Shulman today sought to deflect attention from a joint banking venture that scared investors and caused the company to withdraw the sale of $148.2 million in stock. According to Shulman, the banks are not getting into electronic billing and payment. "That_s something that CheckFree does and CheckFree does exclusively,' he said an interview with the financial news network CNBC. Norcross, Georgia-based CheckFree is an Internet bill-payment company. Investors who quickly sold shares of CheckFree Holdings, which they were allotted this week, created a "short" position in their accounts, selling shares they didn_t yet own. This happened after the company canceled the offering, the Wall Street Journal said in its "Heard on the Street" column. Share issues typically take three days to close, so CheckFree_s decision to cancel its 3.8 million secondary offering left investors who already sold them in a short position because they technically didn_t yet own the shares. Brown & Wood partner Joseph McLaughlin said it_s very unusual for a company to withdraw a stock offering after allocating shares. William Halldin, spokesman for underwriter Merrill Lynch, declined to say whether customers who lost money will be reimbursed, the paper reported. The banking alliance, dubbed the Exchange, was announced Tuesday by financial giants Wells Fargo, Chase Manhattan, and First Union. Schulman added, "What the banks want to do is … convert their paper bills into electronic bills and make them available over the Internet, and otherwise to their customers. CheckFree will continue to pay those bills as well as any other bills a consumer wants to pay through his computer.'