SiliconBeat

VeriFone, the San Jose maker of point-of-sale electronic payment systems, said that GTCR Golder Rauner, a private equity firm that led the company’s initial recapitalization in 2002 and has continued to be a major shareholder since, has told the company it has distributed about 7 million of its shares to their fund participants.

The Chicago firm, which owned 9.66 million shares as of March 31, or 11 percent of VeriFone’s shares outstanding, will no longer own 5 percent or more of VeriFone’s stock.

The move makes Capital Research Global Investors, which owned 9.28 million shares at the end of March, the company’s largest shareholder.

Shares of VeriFone, which lost 79 percent of their value last year as the company completed a restatement of results from fiscal 2007 that lopped off $70 million worth of profits because of “material weaknesses” in the company’s financial reporting process, have gained 63 percent so far this year.