Ford Motor Co. may pull off a feat its crosstown rival hasn’t been able to manage: the successful sale of a Swedish car company. Ford is close to selling its Volvo brand to Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., the Dearborn, Mich.-based car maker said Wednesday. The companies have worked out “all substantive commercial terms” related to Volvo, Ford said, and the deal could be completed by the end of the second quarter of 2010. The automakers still need to work out financing and government approvals, however. If the deal is sealed, it would stand in sharp contrast to failed efforts by General Motors Co. to sell its Saturn and Saab brands in recent months. Last week, Detroit-based GM said it would wind down Saab, as it previously said it would with Saturn, after it was unable to come to terms with bidders for the 60-year-old Swedish company.
Madoff experiencing dizziness, pressure
A lawyer for the hospitalized Bernard Madoff, Ira Sorkin, said his client has experienced dizziness and high blood pressure. The Bureau of Prisons said Thursday that the 71-year-old disgraced financier remains under medical care for a seventh day. Prison officials have declined to reveal why he was transferred from a North Carolina federal prison to a hospital. But bureau spokeswoman Traci Billingsley did say there have been no assaults at the prison in the past week. Madoff has been imprisoned since March after pleading guilty to fraud and admitting cheating thousands of investors out of billions of dollars.
Mortgage executives get big payouts
The two chief executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could get paid as much as $6 million for 2009, despite the companies’ dismal performances this year, which cost taxpayers more than $100 billion. Fannie’s chief executive, Michael Williams, and Freddie Chief Executive Charles “Ed” Haldeman Jr. each will receive $900,000 in salary, $3.1 million in deferred payments next year and another $2 million if they meet certain performance goals, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The pay packages were approved by the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie.
Twitter buying startup service Mixer Labs
Twitter is buying a startup called Mixer Labs in an effort to pinpoint the locations of people posting short messages on its service. Financial terms of the deal announced Wednesday weren’t disclosed. Mixer Labs, founded by a couple of former Google employees, developed a location-tracking tool called GeoAPI. Twitter CEO Evan Williams thinks GeoAPI could prove helpful by showing where people are as they share what they are seeing or experiencing. About 58 million people around the world use Twitter, which accommodates messages of no more than 140 characters.
From Herald news services
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