| 'Idiot' bidder buys speeding ticket at auction
WELLINGTON.- In a strange example of internet madness, a New Zealander has sold a $NZ130 ($A116) speeding ticket on a local online auction website. Nearly 30,000 people viewed Bob Grieve's ticket on the Trade Me site before Allan Hearn, an insurance assessor from Pukekohe, - by chance the V8 motor racing capital of New Zealand - bought it for $NZ51 ($A45.60). Hearn said he had never had a speeding ticket - a gap in his life that is now filled, The Press of Christchurch reported. "For 50 bucks, who cares?" he said. "I told my missus about it, and she called me an idiot." Grieve, a TV cameraman from Christchurch, posted his photograph holding the ticket on the site and said he had fielded a flurry of amorous comments as well as bids.
KKR Confirms It Dropped Out of Group Bidding for Sainsbury
April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. dropped out of the group that's considering a bid for J Sainsbury Plc, leaving its three partners to pursue the takeover plan. KKR withdrew from the planned bid for the third-largest U.K. supermarket chain after talks with other members of the group, it said today in an e-mailed statement. CVC Capital Partners Ltd., Blackstone Group LP and Texas Pacific Group make up the rest of the group, which must decide on a bid by April 13. New York-based KKR dropped out of the group because of its involvement in a takeover offer for U.K. retailer Alliance Boots Plc, two people with knowledge of the deal said. The action won't jeopardize the planned bid, according to the people, who declined to be identified as details aren't public.
Bidding war brews for Alliance Boots
A bidding war broke out for Alliance Boots PLC on Friday as a second private equity consortium came forward with an improved proposal after the pharmacy company accepted a 10.6 billion pound ($21.3 billion) bid from a group comprising its deputy chairman and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Boots shares soared 7.2 percent to 1,125 pence ($22.55) after the rival consortium including private equity group Terra Firma Investments, medical charity the Wellcome Trust and banking group HBOS PLC made an "indicative offer" worth 10.8 billion pounds ($21.6 billion). Boots made no immediate comment on the approach from the Terra consortium. Earlier Friday, the company recommended that its shareholders vote in favor of the sweetened bid from its deputy Chairman Stefano Pessina and KKR valued at 1,090 pence ($21.87) a share.
Slew of flaws cited in RCMP contracts
OTTAWA–An independent audit found multiple violations in contracting practices in the Mounties' beleaguered pension outsourcing scheme, three months after the RCMP dropped its own investigation, the Toronto Star has learned. The KPMG forensic audit, obtained by the Star, looked at 45 consulting contracts valued at more than $7.3 million, mostly tied to the RCMP's pension and insurance division, and many of which appeared to have broken Treasury Board rules and federal contracting guidelines. The audit was completed in December 2005, three months after the RCMP quietly concluded that no criminal charges were warranted against the outside companies and consultants. But violations cited by KPMG include practices that did an end-run around the rules, such as: contracts funnelled toward selected individuals; splitting a contract into two parts thereby reducing the initial price tag in order to avoid a competitive bidding process; and contract back-dating or awarding contracts for work either already done or begun before a contract was signed.
Super Hot Blog Domain Names BlogScoop.com and BlogSpeed.com are ...
Las Vegas, NV -- Apr 13, 2007 -- /prbuzz/ -- Domain names based on two of the hottest Blog terms in the world are being auctioned on eBay this week. BlogScoop.com and BlogSpeed.com are both up for auction this week on eBay, and both are expected to get quite a bit of attention. BlogScoop commonly refers to the first occurrence of a story in the blogosphere. BlogSpeed commonly refers to the speed at which news and information travel in the blogosphere. "Blogs represent the future of how news and information will be distributed", said Jacob Anderson, Marketing Director for NameRSS.com, "The owners of these domains will have a phenomenal platform on which to affect the future of information delivery, and there is great value in that. For example, the domain Blogster.com recently sold for $275,000.
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