IN BRIEF
WASHINGTON
Ex-PurchasePro exec ordered to pay fines
A U.S. District Court judge ruled Tuesday that a former executive at a defunct Las Vegas software company should pay fines and be barred from heading a publicly held company for five years, court documents show.
During a civil trial in April, a jury found Christopher Benyo, who was senior vice president for marketing at PurchasePro Inc., liable of aiding and abetting the company in a fraud scheme.
The jury found two other men, Kent Wakeford, a former executive director at AOL's business affairs unit, and Michael Kennedy, who was chief technology officer at PurchasePro, not liable on all counts.
Regulators accused Benyo and others of scheming to boost PurchasePro's revenue in the first quarter of 2001 as the dot-com economy was collapsing.
NEW YORK
lnsurer AIG paying retention bonuses
American International Group Inc. said it is paying retention bonuses as planned to employees in the unit that sold credit default swaps, the risky contracts that caused massive losses at the insurer.
According to news reports, approximately $450 million is being offered to a group of about 400 employees in the financial products unit. That averages to about $1.13 million per employee.
AIG spokeswoman Christina Pretto would not confirm the dollar amount, but issued the following statement: "We adopted and disclosed this contractual retention program months before the government provided support to AIG. We did so because it was clear, given the market environment, that we would need to retain employees to manage the complex issues arising in our Financial Products business, which we are now unwinding."
NEW YORK
New corporate jet is out for Citigroup
Citigroup won't be getting a new corporate jet after all.
Under pressure from President Barack Obama, one of the nation's largest banks reversed course, announcing that it will not take delivery of the jet it had planned to purchase before the credit crisis unfolded.
The White House reached out to Citigroup on Monday to reiterate Obama's position that such jets are not "the best use of money at this point," calling them "outrageous" spending for a company getting taxpayer dollars, said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was describing private conversations.
With cancellation of the deal, a deposit on the plane will be lost but is recoverable once it's sold, a person familiar with the situation said.
NEW YORK
Treasurys rebound after notes auction
Treasurys rebounded from their string of declines Tuesday after the government auctioned off $40 billion in two-year notes without a hitch.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury note on Tuesday rose 1.06 to 110.53, and its yield fell to 2.52 percent from 2.64 percent.
