Portfolio Recovery Associates
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Formerly called
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| Traded as |
NASDAQ: PRAA S&P 600 Component |
| Founded | March 1996 in Virginia Beach, Virginia |
| Headquarters | Norfolk, Virginia, United States |
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Key people
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Kevin Stevenson (CEO and President; co-founder), Steven Fredrickson (co-founder) |
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Number of employees
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4,000 globally |
| Subsidiaries |
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| Website | Official website |
PRA Group, Inc. or PRA, is a publicly traded debt buyer based in Norfolk, Virginia. PRA was listed in the Federal Trade Commission's " Report on the Debt Buying Industry (dated January, 2013) as one of the largest debt buyers in the US. PRA was among the top five debt buyers in the FTC Report. PRA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and in PRA's 2015 Annual Report to the SEC, PRA stated that it had total revenues of $942 million for 2015, and $880 million for 2014. In the SEC filings, PRA's revenues for 2013 were $735 million.
Hundreds of companies are debt buyers, but PRA Group is among the few that are publicly traded corporations. In 2014, the company was referred to as a "major player in the debt-collection industry". PRA was also listed as one of the largest debt buyer in Human Rights Watch's report " Rubber Stamp Justice", dated February, 2016; which questioned the collection practices of debt buyers.
PRA Group began as Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC in March 1996 by co-founders CEO and President Kevin Stevenson and Steve Fredrickson. They started with four people out of a small office in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The company's debt purchasing activities began a few months after the company was formed, in May 1996.
In 2000, the company reported that it had purchased US$1,000,000,000 of debt during the year, ranking (tying) in 10th place among top debt buyers. By 2010, the company was noted as "the sixth-largest debt buyer in the U.S."
PRA Group's initial public offering was in 2002 and was backed by William Blair & Company and Piper Jaffray. The company is listed on the NASDAQ exchange and traded under the symbol PRAA.
PRA's SEC filings for 2015 state that PRA has large international operations, due to its acquisitions of Aktiv Kapital, a Norway-based debt buyer and lender in Europe and Canada.
The name of the company when formed was Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC. On an unknown date, the company's name changed to Portfolio Recovery Associates, Inc. Then in October 2014, the name changed to PRA Group, Inc. The PRA Group name and the design of its corporate logo were trademarked in 2014.
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Wikipedia