Overpayments

Edison International collected $1.4 billion in excess corporate tax payments from its Southern California Edison utility arm and used the money to help fuel aggressive acquisitions by its other companies, the firm's chief executive acknowledged Friday.

After months of poring over the debt-riddled finances of Daewoo Motor Co., American auto giant Ford Motor Co. said Friday that it has dropped its $6.9-billion bid to buy the troubled South Korean car maker. "Ford Motor Co. has decided not to make a final offer for the acquisition of Daewoo Motor," Vice Chairman W. Wayne Booker said in a surprise announcement. "We believe that a proposal was not possible that would be in the best interest of Daewoo and Ford and their respective stakeholders."

The Long Beach convention bureau overstated its hotel bookings in fiscal year 1998-1999 and overpaid employees $23,000 in performance bonuses based on those inflated figures, a preliminary report revealed Thursday. Long Beach City Auditor Gary L. Burroughs, who released the findings, said the initial conclusions are part of an ongoing internal audit of questionable accounting practices at the Long Beach Area Visitors and Convention Bureau.

Thousands of taxpayers overpaid $25 million in income taxes that should have been credited to their accounts or refunded by the Internal Revenue Service, according to an independent audit that cites computer problems as the main culprit. Thousands more individuals, families and businesses forfeited their rights to refunds or credits, or were at risk of doing so, that totaled $335 million. These taxpayers failed to file late tax returns in time for legal deadlines to qualify for the money.

No New Year's slouch, Westminster resident Janohn Bunck wanted to invite a hundred or so of her closest friends to a millennium bash complete with great grub, marvelous music and grown-up glee. Picture a courtyard party with bubbly in stemware, confetti, noisemakers and midnight embraces. Now rewind. Bunck's fete was Nov. 13. That way, she saved money, avoided crowds and didn't have to give a minute's thought to possible computer failures due to the millennium bug.

Massachusetts is suing a retired Cape Cod teacher who was overpaid $814,950 in retirement benefits and never offered to give the money back, the state attorney general said Friday. The overpayments to Joan L. Phillips, 74, were discovered after an audit of the Massachusetts Teachers Retirement Board. "Over nine years, the state overpaid Phillips hundreds of thousands of dollars she should not have accepted," said Atty. Gen. Thomas Reilly.

On July 1, the HMO industry announced that it would abandon 250,000 Medicare enrollees on Jan. 1, 2000, and raise premiums or other charges for most of the remaining 6 million seniors enrolled in Medicare HMOs. (The federal government puts the number of abandoned seniors at 327,000.) The industry blamed Medicare, saying that the program does not pay HMOs enough. This is nonsense. Numerous studies have found that Medicare overpays HMOs. So why are some HMOs pulling out of the program?

Federal regulators on Friday ordered Pacific Bell and GTE to reduce the monthly fees they charge customers to help pay for the ability for callers to keep the same phone number when they switch carriers. PacBell and GTE, which serve the majority of Californians, began charging the fee in February. It is listed on residential and business phone bills as a "local number portability" charge.

Two executives of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the largest U.S. for-profit hospital operator, were found guilty Friday in a $3-million Medicare fraud, while another executive was acquitted and the jury failed to reach a verdict on a fourth. The federal court jury found defendants Jay Jarrell and Robert Whiteside guilty on six of the seven counts against them.

If you believe that Asia's economy is on the mend and--more important--if you can tolerate volatility and are willing to monitor an investment closely, "closed-end" funds can be an attractive way to bet on an Asian recovery. The caveat, right upfront: Some experts think the easy money may already have been made in closed-end Asia-region funds.