BUSINESS BRIEFS
GM moves to unload Saab
Advertiser news services
DETROIT — Just three days after telling the U.S. government that it might dump its Swedish-based Saab brand, General Motors Corp. placed the struggling unit into reorganization yesterday.
Crisis, it seems, has forced the U.S. auto behemoth to move faster than ever to shed unprofitable brands, leaving European governments to decide whether they're worth saving.
GM Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson said Tuesday that the company is in talks with European labor unions and governments about cost reductions and possible factory closures or spinoffs.
CEO SUBPOENAED ON MERRILL BONUS
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Ken Lewis has received a subpoena from the New York state attorney general's office in connection with Merrill Lynch's payment of employee bonuses before the companies combined on Jan. 1.Former Merrill CEO John Thain, who was subpoenaed last month, also was questioned by investigators on Thursday about the bonuses that were paid in late December, just days before Bank of America completed its purchase of New York-based Merrill, according to a person familiar with the investigation. The person requested anony-mity because of the ongoing nature of the matter.
Bank of America spokesman Robert Stickler yesterday would not comment.
Shares of banks took another pounding amid fears U.S. banks may be nationalized. Shares of the two Wall Street giants, Bank of America and Citigroup Inc., have been under pressure all week as analysts speculated about a possible wave of government ownership in the financial sector.
BANK ACCUSED OF LYING TO U.S.
MIAMI — Swiss bank UBS AG used coded language in internal e-mails and memos, created hundreds of sham offshore entities and lied to U.S. officials in an elaborate scheme to conceal the overseas accounts of wealthy Americans, the Internal Revenue Service claimed in federal court documents.The IRS filed the documents this week seeking to force the bank to turn over records for an estimated 52,000 U.S customers who allegedly violated American tax laws by concealing Swiss accounts worth at least $14.8 billion.
A UBS spokesman would not comment, noting only that UBS has previously said it will fight the IRS effort — known as a "John Doe summons" — to learn the identities of these thousands of American clients. Earlier this week, UBS agreed to pay $780 million and disclose up to 300 UBS account holders to avoid criminal prosecution for those transactions.
