| Speeding ticket sold in online auction
It started as a speeding fine on a lonely road, but by the end Bob Grieve was a Trade Me star, $NZ51 ($A45.60) richer and fielding amorous advances from complete strangers. Grieve, a TV3 news cameraman in Christchurch, was peeved when a slightly heavy foot while driving back from Geraldine resulted in a policeman handing him a $NZ130 ($A116) fine. So he did what anyone does these days - he put the ticket up for sale on online auction site Trade Me. "I thought it would be a bit of fun. I didn't really know how it would go, but I figured quite a few people would notice it," he said. Ten days later, his auction had been viewed nearly 30,000 times, questions were being posted faster than he could answer them, and then his ticket was being sold to an insurance assessor from near Pukekohe who vowed to pay for the privilege of having someone else's speeding fine.
BCE bidding war looms
MONTREAL - BCE Inc. has put itself into play, sparking a potential bidding war among Canada's top pension funds for Canada's largest telephone company. BCE, the parent of Bell Canada, said yesterday it had entered into talks with a group that includes Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP), Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, Public Sector Pension Investment Board and U.S. privateequity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts &Co. about a possible buyout. "This is an expression of intent, and we are heading into a period of due diligence," said Ian Dale, a CPP spokesman. .
Question follows Prince Charles auction
Zions National Bank of Utah had the only bid for the foreclosure auction of the Prince Charles Hotel this morning. The bank, which is foreclosing the hotel’s mortgage from owner R.K. Properties of Rockville, Maryland, offered $2.43 million to take ownership and cover the debt. But its unclear whether the auction is valid, said Dee Whitley, the bank’s trustee. He was told this morning that R.K. Properties filed for bankruptcy today. If the hotel goes into bankruptcy, it would be shielded from its creditors and the auction could be moot. R.K. Properties bought the hotel in 2004 from retired doctor Menno Pennink and his business partners. R.K. stopped paying its mortgage with Zions in fall 2006 and the bank got a court order to take over management of the property in late January.
OJ Simpson book auction canceled
LOS ANGELES - A court-ordered auction of the rights to O.J. Simpson's quasi-confessional book “If I Did It" was canceled because the former football star's surrogate company has declared bankruptcy, an attorney for the father of murder victim Ron Goldman said Monday. But Fred Goldman said he would ask a U.S. bankruptcy court to sell him the book rights as part of a campaign to collect some of the $33.5 million in damages Simpson was ordered to pay in 1997, lawyer David Cook said. “O.J. Simpson just hired the federal bankruptcy trustee as the auctioneer," Fred Goldman's lawyer, David Cook, said. The auction had been scheduled for Tuesday with the proceeds going to Goldman. The book, which was scrapped in November amid a public furor, was billed by publisher HarperCollins as a hypothetical account of how Simpson could have murdered his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman — though he maintains his innocence of the crime.
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