Kaiser retirees, ex-workers invited to meet with federal pension insurer
Kaiser Aluminum retirees and former workers covered by the company’s hourly or salaried pension plans can meet next week with officials of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
Representatives of the PBGC will hold meetings at 10 a.m. and again at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Best Western Hotel in Coeur d’Alene.
Similar meetings will be held in Spokane at the Red Lion Hotel at the Park during the following two days. They are scheduled at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. Wednesday, and 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Thursday.
The meetings are scheduled to last an hour.
PBGC representatives will explain the federal program and answer questions.
The federal pension insurer has taken over Kaiser’s pension plans, which cover more than 15,000 workers. Benefit payments to retirees have continued uninterrupted.
Kaiser, which is attempting to emerge from bankruptcy protection later this year, surrendered its plans after they became under-funded by $595 million.
For more information, call 1-800-400-7242. For callers with hearing impairments, more information is available at 1-800-877-8339; ask to be connected to 1-800-400-7242.
Kaiser sells refinery stake for $400 million
Kaiser Aluminum Corp. has sold its 20 percent stake in Queensland Alumina Ltd. for $400 million.
Proceeds from the sale, to Russian Aluminum (Rusal), will likely by used to help repay noteholders and the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the agency that took over Kaiser’s under-funded pension plans to support some 15,000 retirees and workers.
Kaiser’s share of the giant Australian refinery was considered among its most valuable assets in its ongoing bankruptcy case.
At one time, alumina from Queensland was shipped to smelters in the Pacific Northwest.
The sale is among the last of Kaiser’s assets involved in the commodity business since it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002.
The company, now headquartered in Orange County, Calif., has sold smelters, refineries and mining interests located around the world.
It continues to run factories that produce and sell fabricated aluminum, such as the Trentwood rolling mill where workers manufacture metal sheet and plate for the aerospace industry.
Daines’ LLIX buys 2 Internet service providers
Liberty Lake Internet Exchange has announced the acquisition of two Spokane-area Internet service providers.
LLIX bought the two firms, Aim Communications and Omnicast Internet Services, in late 2004. In both cases, terms of the purchase were not disclosed.
The primary owner of LLIX is technology pioneer Bernard Daines.
Launched two years ago, LLIX has become a full-service data center and connectivity provider.
Customers who were subscribers to Omnicast and Aim already have seen the transition in service to LLIX, said marketing director Octavio Morales.
LLIX will “continue to look for strategic acquisitions of local providers, and expect to complete a few more in the coming months,” said Dan Seliger, the company’s network operations manager, in a press release.
Ford’s U.S. sales slip in March
Ford Motor Co. reported a 5 percent decline in U.S. sales in March despite hopes for a recovery after a tough winter.
Ford, the nation’s No. 2 automaker behind General Motors Corp., said Friday that sales of Ford, Lincoln and Mercury trucks and sport utility vehicles, which have been the company’s bread and butter, fell 6.6 percent in March and are down 7.9 percent for the year.
Car sales were down 1.75 percent for the month, but are up 5.1 percent for the year, helped by the hot-selling Ford Mustang. Ford also said the Mercury Montego sedan achieved its best sales since it went on sale last fall.
Prosecutors show no sympathy for Stewart
Mocking Martha Stewart’s claim that home confinement is damaging to her business, federal prosecutors urged a judge Friday to make no changes to her sentence for lying about a stock sale.
“Minor inconvenience to one’s ability to star in a television show is an insufficient ground for resentencing,” prosecutor Michael Schachter wrote in a six-page letter to Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum.
Stewart asked the judge last week to cut short her five-month term of house arrest. She has served about a month confined to her Westchester County estate, after spending five months in a federal prison in West Virginia.
The homemaking maven said serving the rest of her sentence would hamper production of her two upcoming television series – a daytime talk show and a new rendition of NBC’s “The Apprentice.”
She has also complained in a Web chat that the electronic monitoring bracelet she is forced to wear during house arrest is unwieldy and chafes her skin.
But prosecutors argued the sentence was lenient, and that Stewart, who has suggested she was prosecuted for being a woman and a celebrity, “has shown no remorse and accepted no responsibility for her crimes.”