eriFone's roller-coaster year has been far from amusing, but its fun might have just begun.

By the time Gores Technology Group completed the purchase of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based equipment provider in July 2001, the consensus around the payment-processing industry was that previous owner Hewlett-Packard Co. had all but destroyed VeriFone. Most of its senior management had exited. VeriFone no longer was considered number one.

But the Gores-led VeriFone has a new focus - a focus couldn't come at a more sensitive time.

"We're now focusing on what we do well and what customers tell us we do well - and that's the high-end payment appliance market," says Doug Bergeron, the new VeriFone CEO.

Gores, a privately held international acquisition and management firm, pursues an aggressive strategy of acquiring promising high-technology organizations and managing them for growth and profitability. It's determined to do the same with VeriFone.

In a recent open letter to the industry, Bergeron wrote that one of VeriFone's key achievements in its first 100 days under Gores was "a rapid return to entrepreneurial management and organizational structures that competes more successfully."

Does this mean it was lacking under the HP regime? Not exactly, according to Bergeron.

"What happened under H-P was not all bad," he says. "Some of the order and process in engineering was needed . a maturity."

In this issue, The Green Sheet takes an in-depth look at how Bergeron managed VeriFone's new maturity and company culture - and how it is perceived by others in the industry.