Discover Veers Away From M&A

Discover Financial Services is stepping away from its recent M&A binge and trying to grow the old-fashioned way: by developing new businesses itself.

The Riverwoods, Ill., credit card company has been a frequent buyer in the past year as it tries to expand beyond its traditional roots in card lending and transaction processing. It has snapped up stray loan portfolios, online deposits and other assets from Citigroup Inc., Tree.com Inc. and others.

But now Discover is refocusing on developing new businesses internally instead of buying them. It intends to launch a new online checking account at the end of 2012 and is currently "installing a computer system to support some of the features,"....

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