Posted: 09 Mar 2010 02:08 PM PST

Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. ABG, one of the largest automotive retail and service companies in the U.S., today announced that its Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Craig T. Monaghan, will present at the upcoming Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2010 Consumer Conference in New York at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on March 11, 2010.

A live audio webcast will be available at: https://www.veracast.com/webcasts/bas/consumer2010/id26561980.cfm

Presentation slides will be available on the Company's Investor Relations website at: http://www.asburyauto.com

About Asbury Automotive Group

Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. ("Asbury"), headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, is one of the largest automotive retailers in the U.S. Built through a combination of organic growth and a series of strategic acquisitions, Asbury currently operates 81 retail auto stores, encompassing 108 franchises for the sale and servicing of 38 different brands of American, European and Asian automobiles. Asbury offers customers an extensive range of automotive products and services, including new and used vehicle sales and related financing and insurance, vehicle maintenance and repair services, replacement parts and service contracts.

Asbury Automotive Group, Inc.
Investors Contact:
Ryan Marsh, 770-418-8211
Corporate Treasurer
ir@asburyauto.com
or
Porter Novelli
Reporters Contact:
Anna Okula, 404-995-4554
aokula@porternovelli.com

Back to News Home

MSN Money: Search MSN Money; Message Boards; Site Status

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Certification helps inmates ending sentences - WBIR

Posted: 09 Mar 2010 01:03 PM PST

By Clay Carey, THE TENNESSEAN

When Mario Allen finally set foot on free ground 15 years ago, he walked into a scary place.

Allen, 27 at the time, had just finished a seven-year prison sentence for assault. He left a place that he knew and walked into a world that was new and unwelcoming.

"It was a challenge," said Allen, now 42. "People were scared of me, and I was scared of them."

The odds of staying free were against Allen. Statistically, experts say, only one out of every three people nationwide released from prison or put on parole manages to make it three years without being rearrested.

Some new efforts under way in Tennessee are aimed at stemming that tide by helping released inmates make an honest living. The state is in the process of putting hundreds of prison inmates through a program that will ultimately pronounce their proficiency in basic job skills. Tennessee is also backing a new private effort to create a statewide network for men and women who are trying to adjust to life out of jail.

Advocates and law enforcement officers say ex-cons who get into the work force are far less likely to end up back behind bars, which ultimately leads to lower crime rates and a less-expensive prison system.

According to a study completed in 2007, 39 percent of those released from a Tennessee prison wound up back behind bars within three years. That is down from 42 percent in 2001.

Jim Cosby, assistant commissioner for rehabilitative services for the Tennessee Department of Correction, attributes the decline in large part to efforts aimed at getting inmates ready to work. Already, between 800 and 1,000 state prisoners get specialized training annually in trades like carpentry, welding, cosmetology and auto repair.

Over the next 18 months, 4,000 inmates will be tested through the National Career Readiness Certificate program, which is new to Tennessee prisons.

The tests, which are given to members of the free public at local career centers, rate an individual's aptitude in reading, math and other skills and rank their readiness for basic employment.

Inmates who go through the certification program can take the results to a community center upon their release, Cosby said, and career counselors will know what kinds of jobs they are equipped for.

The tests were paid for largely through federal stimulus dollars, Cosby said.

Only the beginning

But getting an inmate ready to work is only one piece of the puzzle, experts say. Once that's done, they have to find a place to work - a daunting task for men and women with felonies on their records.

Allen eventually started his own construction company in Memphis and also is vice chairman of the Tennessee Community Resource Board, an organization that reaches out to men and women behind bars.

He often hires employees with records. "Some of the greatest workers are ex-offenders," he said, because getting a job is so much tougher for them. However, he typically doesn't broadcast that fact, or his own criminal past, to clients for fear of losing business.

"It's almost like you have to stay beneath the radar," he said.

More than anything, most people coming out of prison need jobs, according to Tim Dempsey, chairman and CEO of the community resource board of Chattanooga Endeavors, a charity that works with ex-offenders.

Speaking to a conference in Nashville, Dempsey said that even those who come out of prison with a trade have a hard time convincing companies that they are worth taking a chance on. Dempsey said about two in 10 companies will knowingly hire an ex-con.

"That's the problem we really have," Dempsey said. "It's not skills training. It's employer training."

A new nonprofit effort called Out4Life has hopes of getting more inmates ready to work - and preparing more companies to take a chance on them.

"All the job training and certification is good, but there has to be someone out there willing to hire you," said Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, the privately funded nonprofit group that runs Out4Life.

The fellowship's new effort will try to pull existing help groups together and align them with government, churches and other nonprofits. As a coalition, they would be able to focus on niche needs and provide better service, said Aimee Vance, a field director with Prison Fellowship. It will also identify employers who will hire men and women with criminal records, and give ex-offenders training on how to market themselves and address their backgrounds.

"We're able to give employers some insight beyond what appears on pieces of paper," Earley said.

Positive impact

By working with people, Prison Fellowship officials said, organizations and employers could see a reduction in crime, less prison spending and more productive citizens.

"It can make a difference," said Robert Nash, commander of the Metro Police Department's East Precinct.

"Take a burglar, for instance, that can easily go out and commit three burglaries a day," Nash said. "If you can get that person on the right track, making an honest living ... you can have a powerful impact.

Out4Life is up and running in Louisiana and Arkansas; organizers say the project is still too new to have shown tangible effects on prison reentry. This year, it will start in Tennessee and nine other states.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Toyota finds no flaw with safety electronics - Reuters

Posted: 09 Mar 2010 12:56 PM PST

DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp said it had found no flaw with its throttle controls as it seeks to dismiss an external study critical of its electronic safety systems.

U.S.

The conclusions, announced at a news conference on Monday, marked an attempt by the automaker to reassure consumers it has safety issues under control. Toyota is working to win back sales seven weeks into a recall crisis that has tarnished its reputation.

But in developments that underscored the continuing pressure on Toyota, a Michigan judge ordered the automaker's top two U.S. executives to appear for a deposition and a congressional panel told it to surrender a 2006 memo from employees in Japan warning of risks to quality controls.

Toyota called its news conference to discredit what it said were mistaken conclusions being drawn from a study of its accelerator controls by David Gilbert, an auto engineering expert at Southern Illinois University.

Toyota has recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide for mechanical problems with its accelerator assembly that can cause sticking and for the risk that floormats could trap an accelerator.

Unintended acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles has been linked to at least five U.S. crash deaths since 2007. Authorities are investigating 47 other crash deaths over the past decade.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has also said it is looking into more recent complaints from drivers who say they suffered acceleration problems even after their vehicles were fixed in the recent recall effort.

Those complaints have been seen by some as further evidence that Toyota could face a problem with vehicle electronics or software that could go beyond the mechanical fixes it has announced under its recalls.

But Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said the automaker had found that post-recall accelerator complaints appeared to reflect a small number of cases where repairs at dealerships had not been performed correctly.

"We're confident in our electronic throttle control systems," Michels said.

TOYOTA: NO EVIDENCE OF FLAW

Gilbert told a congressional panel in late February that he had found a way to simulate a flaw in Toyota's accelerator controls so that the vehicle could surge forward without a fault code being generated for an onboard computer Toyota has designed as a safeguard.

But Toyota said an outside review of Gilbert's findings by a Stanford University expert and engineering consulting company Exponent had not found evidence that conditions described by Gilbert could occur in real-world driving.

Chris Gerdes, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford and director of the university's Center for Automotive Research, said Gilbert had essentially "rewired" Toyota's accelerator system to generate his results.

"Fundamentally, you cannot rewire a circuit and expect it to behave as designed," Gerdes told reporters.

Gilbert said he planned to visit Exponent's test facilities next week and expected to complete a review of the information it had presented in the next few weeks.

"I am pleased that further examination of these safety and acceleration issues is taking place, and I look forward to participating in this process," he said in an email to Reuters.

JUDGE ORDERS TOYOTA TESTIMONY

Toyota is facing dozens of lawsuits stemming from its recalls and both sides in that litigation have been working to line up expert witnesses.

Gilbert has received some funding from the Safety Research and Strategies, a safety advocacy that has in turn taken funding from trial lawyers with cases pending against Toyota.

For its part, Toyota has hired Exponent and has provided financial assistance to Stanford's auto safety center.

Toyota and Exponent said they were continuing to test other explanations for unintended acceleration that would go beyond the problems it has identified.

Separately on Monday, a Flint, Michigan area judge ordered Toyota's top two U.S. executives -- Yoshimi Inaba and Jim Lentz -- to appear for questioning for lawyers for the family of a woman who was killed in a Camry crash in 2008.

Guadalope Alberto died when her 2005 Camry surged out of control. Her family is suing Toyota. Lawyers for Toyota had argued that lower-level executives should be allowed to answer questions from Alberto's lawyer, but the judge ordered Lentz and Inaba to appear, said Hike Heiskell, a lawyer for the Alberto family.

Also on Monday, Rep. Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, asked Toyota to turn over a letter Toyota employees in Japan sent to management in 2006 detailing safety concerns. Towns made the request in a letter sent on Monday.

The October 2006 letter, addressed to then-president Katsuaki Watanabe from a splinter union called the All Toyota Labor Union in the wake of a recall scandal in Japan, had warned that a failure to address quality concerns could ultimately threaten the company's survival.

Among the causes of the quality slippage, the group blamed the fall in the number of experienced staff in favor of contract workers, the longer working hours and the aggressive pursuit of cost reductions.

The letter appeared on the 20-member union's website. Toyota had no immediate comment.

(Additional reporting by Chang-Ran Kim in Tokyo; Editing by Carol Bishopric and Anshuman Daga)

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Toyota rebuts professor's claims - Delaware Online

Posted: 09 Mar 2010 12:49 PM PST

WASHINGTON -- Toyota gave detailed evidence Monday that it says disproves claims that electronics may cause the unwanted acceleration that led to the recall of more than 8 million cars and trucks.

Toyota was attempting to counter tests by an Illinois engineering professor who said Toyota engines could rev without a driver pressing on the gas. The automaker says mechanical problems, not electronics, are to blame.

Chris Gerdes, director of Stanford University's Center for Automotive Research, and a consulting firm, Exponent Inc., said the professor had tampered with wiring to create electronic glitches that could never occur on the road. The professor's work "could result in misguided policy and unwarranted fear," Gerdes said.

The work of David W. Gilbert, an automotive technology professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, has been the basis of many doubts that Toyota's mechanical fixes for unwanted acceleration will truly solve the problem.

Gilbert told a congressional hearing Feb. 23 that he re-created sudden acceleration in a Toyota Tundra by short-circuiting the electronics behind the gas pedal -- without triggering any trouble codes in the truck's computer.

"We do not believe that electronics are at the root of this issue," Mike Michels, a Toyota spokesman, said during a demonstration at the automaker's offices in Torrance, Calif.

Toyota says faulty gas pedals and floor mats are the cause. It is fixing millions of vehicles to correct those problems. But some drivers have reported continued problems in vehicles that have been supposedly fixed.

Federal safety regulators are investigating complaints over Toyota's repairs. Michels said the automaker is also reviewing the complaints, and that some were the result of bad repairs.

Gilbert told Congress he made a "startling discovery" that showed the electronic throttle control system could have a problem without producing a trouble code. The code sends the computer into a failsafe mode that allows the brake to override the gas.

According to Exponent, Gilbert connected sensor wires from the pedal of a 2010 Toyota Avalon to an engineered circuit, revving the engine without using the pedal. Gilbert demonstrated the method in an ABC News story last month.

Exponent said it reproduced the test on the same model year Avalon and a 2007 Camry and was able to rev the engine. But it concluded the electronic throttle system would have to be tampered with significantly to create the right conditions.

"Dr. Gilbert's scenario amounts to connecting the accelerator pedal sensors to an engineered circuit that would be highly unlikely to occur naturally, and that can only be contrived in a laboratory," an Exponent report said.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.