Group America Inc

The Federal Trade Commission Tuesday accused two local firms of defrauding hundreds of people in separate nationwide telemarketing operations that may have cost investors more than $100 million. Operating out of Southland "boiler rooms," the companies used high-pressure sales tactics to pull in mainly elderly customers with false promises of high-yield, virtually risk-free investments in precious metals, the FTC alleged in separate civil lawsuits.

The Federal Trade Commission Tuesday accused two local firms of defrauding hundreds of people in separate nationwide telemarketing operations that may have cost investors more than $100 million. Operating out of Southland "boiler rooms," the companies used high-pressure sales tactics to pull in mainly elderly customers with false promises of high-yield, virtually risk-free investments in precious metals, the FTC alleged in separate civil lawsuits.

Kim E. Jeffery has replaced Ronald V. Davis as president and chief executive of Perrier Group of America Inc., company officials announced Thursday. Jeffery, 44, joined the company in 1978 as a sales manager and has served as chief operating officer of Greenwich, Conn.-based Perrier Group since 1991. Davis, who becomes chairman of the board, joined Perrier Group in 1979 and became president and chief executive in 1980 at the age of 33. Perrier Group is a subsidiary of Source Perrier, Paris.

Construction has begun on a $25-million laboratory in Oxnard that its owners hope will be one of the most advanced auto emissions testing and powertrain development facilities in the country. Engineers for Volkswagen Group of America Inc. will work there on the company's signature VWs as well as other brands it owns: Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti. The 63,000-square-foot facility on four acres at 201 N. Del Norte Blvd. will also be a customer service support center for Bugatti dealers and customers in North and South America.

Perrier water will be back on the shelves soon, but it won't have the same sparkle--at least not on the label. The Food and Drug Administration has ruled that the mineral water's claim to be "naturally sparkling" is false and ordered the American distributor to remove the phrase from bottles by July 30. "The water comes out of the ground and the carbonation is added," Bob Crowell, compliance officer in the FDA's Boston district office, said today.

Services Group of America Inc., a closely held holding company for food distributors, agreed Sunday to buy Marriott International Inc.'s food distribution business to allow it to expand into California and elsewhere in the West. Terms weren't disclosed. Services Group's McCabe's Quality Foods Inc. distributes food throughout the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim to such chains as Burger King, Wendy's and Arby's.

The entire American stock of Perrier mineral water, a bubbly beverage drawn from a spring in France, is being recalled after benzene was found in some samples. Ronald V. Davis, president of Perrier Group of America Inc., said experts have advised that short-term consumption "poses no significant health risks to the general population." However, he said in a statement issued Friday night: "We're trying to act aggressively and responsibly in the interests of the public."

The federal government has filed a securities fraud lawsuit against a Newport Beach businessman and won an immediate court order freezing his assets and those of his two companies. The Securities and Exchange Commission charges in its civil action that Henry J. Kyle sold more than $3 million in securities that were unregistered and promoted as safe investments to mostly elderly citizens throughout the country and that he diverted some of the money to companies run by associates.

The American importer of Perrier said Saturday that it will stop selling the French mineral water for two to three months while the company seeks the source of a cancer-causing chemical that showed up in tests of the product last week. Company officials believe that "human error" was involved in the contamination of the water, possibly in the production of its famed green bottles, or in the shipping from its plant in Vergeze, France. But Ronald V.

Jonathan Browning, the new chief of Volkswagen's U.S. operations, has a tall order from the automaker's corporate czars in Wolfsburg, Germany: Start selling 800,000 VWs annually by 2018. That's more than three times its sales last year. Decades ago, VW sold hundreds of thousands of the iconic Beetle and was the top auto importer in America, and such a goal seemed within reach then. But a long battle with quality and reliability problems have driven those buyers to Asian brands and even back to domestic manufacturers.