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GM considers new bid for its finance arm

By wire services
Published March 16, 2006

General Motors Corp. is considering a bid of $12.5-billion to $13-billion for a majority stake in its financing arm from a group led by New York private-equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts and some banks, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The newspaper said the nonbinding bid for the stake in General Motors Acceptance Corp. gives the automaker another option to the bid from Cerberus Capital Management, a private-equity and hedge fund group.

ChoicePoint Inc., whose massive database of consumer information was accessed by thieves, paid chief executive Derek Smith $5.3-million in total compensation last year, the company said in a regulatory filing Wednesday. The chief operating officer, Douglas Curling, was paid $2.5-million in total compensation last year.

In January, ChoicePoint agreed to pay $15-million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges related to allegations the company's security and record-handling procedures violated consumers' privacy rights when thieves infiltrated its database. Another investigation of Smith and Curling by the Securities and Exchange Commission related to stock sales continues.

DuPont Co. said Wednesday it plans to cut 1,500 jobs and close four facilities in Europe in a restructuring of its performance coatings business. It also raised its overall earnings outlook as shares rose nearly 2.3 percent.

Ford Motor Co. plans to charge an additional fee for salaried employees who want to have their spouses included on the company's health-care plan. The fee would only apply to spouses who can access health benefits elsewhere. Ford spent $3.5-billion on health care expenses in 2005, compared with $3.1-billion in 2004.

High oil and natural gas prices figured heavily Wednesday as petroleum exploration companies put up $588.3-million in high bids for 405 offshore tracts off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The figure far exceeded last year's auction by the U.S. Minerals Management Service when $342-million in high bids were accepted for 403 tracts that exploration firms are betting on to produce in the central Gulf of Mexico.

The chairman and chief executive of Knight Ridder, P. Anthony Ridder, who sold the newspaper chain to the McClatchy Co. on Monday, said Tuesday night that he resisted the sale and then sought to persuade McClatchy to keep most of the company's 32 papers. But McClatchy and its company's chairman, Gary Pruitt, said they were putting 12 of the papers back on the market. "It's terrible," Ridder said, "the whole thing," referring both to the sale of the company and the split.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is taking control of a Central American retail chain that it first bought into last September as it expands in Latin America, the world's largest retailer said Wednesday. Wal-Mart said it had raised its stake in Central American Retail Holding Co. to 51 percent from the 33.3 percent.

VERACRUZ, Mexico - President Vicente Fox climbed aboard a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday to formally announce a new deep-water oil discovery he said could eventually yield 10-billion barrels of crude oil.

Government estimates say the find could exceed reserves at the giant offshore field Cantarell, Mexico's largest oil field, which has seen its production decline but is still expected to yield 1.9-million barrels a day this year.

[Last modified March 16, 2006, 02:00:27]