SOUTHFIELD, Mich. – Dan Balagna, CEO of the Service Centers Corporation and a 40-year veteran of the Michigan credit union industry, has announced that he will be retiring from SCC as of January 1, 2004. "My wife and I have been talking about and contemplating retirement for some time," Balagna said, adding that he had been resolved to see it happen before he turned 60. Balagna is 59. Balagna said he got his start with the Michigan Credit Union League 40 years ago and that he had spent half of his career with SCC to move shared branching forward. SCC is widely seen as the father of shared branching in the U.S. and recently became a subsidiary of the Ontario, California based CO-OP Network. In 1975, Balagna helped SCC pioneer the concept of shared branching in the credit union industry and was responsible for setting up SCC's accounting procedures, training its first shared branch manager and conducting audits of SCC during its first few years of operations. Later, as the League's controller and director of finance, he served on the SCC board of directors as its treasurer, and then became the first President and CEO of SCC in 1981. Under Balagna's guidance, SCC has expanded to operate a national shared branch service for credit unions around the country. Balagna said that his board as well as the leadership from CO-OP had been supportive through the process of discerning a schedule for retirement and that he looked forward to working with the board to determine a strategy for naming a successor. Robert Rose, CEO, CO-OP Network, said, "Dan is a valued colleague who has made tremendous contributions to the credit union industry. He is clearly the brains behind shared branching and we will be pointing to his ideas for years to come." In a separate announcement, Ken Sucher has been promoted from Senior Vice President to Executive Vice President of Operations and IT. As Chief Operations Officer, Sucher will fill an open position created with the CO-OP Network business combination, and will assume the day-to-day operations with SCC. This will allow Balagna to focus on strategic business initiatives that include working with the SCC board on succession plan alternatives.