Wipeout

Capmark Financial’s bankruptcy filing yester day amounts to the wip ing out of the private eq uity investments of buyout giant KKR, Gold man Sachs Capital Part ners and Five Mile Capi tal, which bought the firm for $1.5 billion in cash and more than $7 billion in debt. Accord ing to the filing, the group owned 75.4 per cent of the company, which listed total debt of $21 billion and assets of $20.1 billion. KKR al ready wrote down its in vestment to zero. The firm was created out of the commercial real es tate assets of GM’s fi nance arm in 2006.

Plugged in

Luxury carmaker Fisker Automotive of Irvine, Calif., plans to build plug- in hybrid electric vehicles at a former GM plant in Delaware. A formal an nouncement is expected tomorrow. The GM plant closed last summer and had produced the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice roadsters.

Gas hike

The average price of regular gasoline rose to $2.66 a gallon — the first increase in national sur vey prices in two months — as futures prices for crude oil and the motor fuel increased. Crude for December de livery rose 11 percent in the two weeks ended Oct. 23, and during that period, gasoline for No vember delivery jumped 16 percent.

Sad Siemens

Tech giant Siemens of Germany plans to cut an unspecified number of jobs because of the eco nomic crisis, a company spokesman said yester day, confirming a news report.