LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY “Gamblers, like other people, have
to feel comfortable about their financial situation. ...When the economy got tanked, the industry got whacked.”
Joseph Weinert,
senior vice president of Linwood, N.J.-based Spectrum Gaming Group Article, 1D
GM offering reaches $23.1 billion
DETROIT - General Motors says the underwriters in its recent initial public offering have exercised their full over-allotment option to purchase an additional 71.7 million shares of common stock, bringing the total size of its recent IPO to $23.1 billion.
General Motors Co.’s over-allotment shares were worth $2.37 billion. The underwriters also exercised the right to purchase an additional 13 million shares of mandatory convertible junior preferred stock from the Detroit automaker, for a total of $650 million.
The closing for the additional shares is expected to take place Thursday.
GM stock rose 32 cents, or nearly 1 percent, to close Friday at $33.80.
Toyota’s global car production dips
TOKYO - Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s No. 1 automaker whose reputation has been dented by a series of recalls, reported a fall in global car production for October even as it and Japanese rivals Nissan and Honda produced a record number of vehicles in China.
Toyota, which makes the Prius hybrid, Corolla compact and Lexus luxury cars, said Friday that global output fell 12.5 percent in October to 687,660 vehicles. Its production in China of 62,124 vehicles last month was up 4.4 percent from the previous year and a record high for October.
Tokyo-based Honda Motor Co. produced 305,406 vehicles worldwide in October, up 1.4 percent from a year earlier and the 11th straight month of growth, driven by the popularity of the Fit subcompact and other models.
In China alone it made 55,507 vehicles, up 4.4 percent from the year before and a record for October.
Nissan Motor Co., based in Yokohama, Japan, produced 363,227 vehicles worldwide last month, up 11.6 percent from 2009, as demand stayed strong for Nissan cars in Mexico and Europe, and trucks and sport utility vehicles sold briskly in the U.S.
Australian businessman held in China
SHANGHAI - An Australian entrepreneur is being detained in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in connection with a police investigation, his company said.
Travel services company Et-China, a joint venture partner with China Southern Airlines, said in a statement on its website Friday that its chief executive officer, Matthew Ng, had been detained by police “as part of their investigations as a suspect of the crime of misappropriation of company assets.”
“As far as Et-China is aware at present Matthew Ng has not been charged with any offense,” it said.
The company’s acting chief executive officer, Chris Rose, urged authorities to resolve the matter and release Ng.
Police in Guangzhou did not immediately respond to phoned and faxed requests for comment Friday.
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed Friday the detention on suspicion of embezzlement of a 44-year-old Australian man and longtime resident of China on Nov. 16. It refused to release his name, citing privacy laws.
Australian news reports said the detention was related to a business dispute between Et-China, which has shares listed on the London Stock Exchange, and a local partner.
The case follows the arrest and subsequent conviction earlier this year of four employees of mining giant Rio Tinto for bribery and infringing trade secrets. The case raised worries over the vulnerability of employees of foreign companies to enforcement of the country’s state secrets and corruption laws.
Boston broker sentenced in fraud
BOSTON - A Boston man has received a jail sentence and been ordered to pay $100,000 restitution for his role in a mortgage fraud scheme.
Prosecutors say 39-year-old mortgage broker Brian Arrington was sentenced this week to a year in jail, with all but one month suspended for a probationary period of three years.
He pleaded guilty to charges including multiple larceny counts.
The attorney general’s office said Arrington was one of six people involved in the scheme, in which investors interested in buying multifamily homes in the Boston area were lured in with inflated appraisals of 26 distressed properties. The buyers were then left with properties not worth the loans obtained to purchase them.
Arrington’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a call for comment Friday.
Declaration required for UBS execs
Former UBS AG executives will have to sign a declaration that they didn’t know of any breaches of duty under Swiss law in connection with the U.S. tax case if they return to senior positions in finance, Swiss regulators said.
This would apply to individuals who held the positions of head of global wealth management, chief executive officer and chairman of the Zurich-based bank, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, known as Finma, said in a statement Friday. “If such a declaration should prove to be untrue, this would lead to criminal prosecution,” the regulator said.
The country’s regulator is responding to a report prepared by a Swiss parliamentary committee earlier this year, which examined how authorities dealt with the U.S.
tax case and the handover of data on American clients of UBS suspected of tax evasion. Finma concluded in a report published last year that senior management of UBS had no knowledge of the “fraudulent maneuvers to the detriment of the U.S. tax authorities.”
Finma has “carefully examined the possibilities provided by regulatory law for further investigations,” the regulator said Friday. “It concluded that no new evidence has emerged which would warrant a review of earlier regulatory investigations, nor would the instruments atthe disposal of Finma permit such action.”
UBS admitted last year that starting in 2000 and continuing until 2007 it “participated in a scheme to defraud the United States” and agreed to pay $780 million to avoid prosecution.
The Swiss regulator gave the bank the go-ahead to disclose details of more than 250 clients to the U.S. authorities, who threatened to file criminal charges against the bank.
Business, Pages 32 on 11/27/2010