NATIONAL BRIEFING
NATIONAL BRIEFING
GM unveiled the Beat and two other ultra-small cars as concepts last year, including at the International Auto Show in New York.
(By Seth Wenig -- Associated Press)
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AUTOMOTIVE
GM May Launch Its Own Mini Car
General Motors is considering a new Chevrolet mini car for the United States as it reworks its product lineup to cope with a dramatic consumer shift to more fuel efficient vehicles, a spokesman said.
GM spokesman Dee Allen said bringing the Chevrolet Beat to the U.S. market is among the options the company is studying. About the size of a Honda Fit or Toyota Yaris, the Beat is a front-wheel-drive, three-door hatchback.
The Beat, to be built in South Korea, will be rolled out in other global markets faster than it would in the United States, Allen said. The car still must be engineered to meet U.S. safety and emissions standards, he said.
U.S. mini car sales are up nearly 31 percent for the first half of the year, even though the total U.S. auto market is down more than 18 percent, according to Autodata Corp.
LEGAL
Former Refco CEO Sentenced
Phillip Bennett, the former chief executive of Refco, was sentenced to 16 years in prison Thursday for fleecing investors of more than $2.4 billion in a fraud that destroyed the world's largest independent commodities broker.
The sentence marks the latest chapter in the decline and fall of Bennett, 59, who built Refco into a global commodities trading empire only to see it unravel in 2005 after the company disclosed an accounting deception.
Prosecutors said Bennett engineered fraudulent transactions to take bad debt off the company's balance sheet at the end of reporting periods, so investors and others would not know about them. Bennett pleaded guilty in February to 20 counts of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and lying to auditors and others. His plea came just a month before he was set to go to trial.
U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald ordered Bennett to be kept under house arrest in his New Jersey home until he surrenders to a federal facility in September. After serving his sentence, Bennett is to be deported to his native Britain.
Bennett, who at Refco's peak was a billionaire, will forfeit all his assets as part of his sentence.
