Sentence Reduced: British judges halved the five-year...

Sentence Reduced: British judges halved the five-year sentence that former Guinness Chairman Ernest Saunders, 55, received for his part in a fraud scandal. The decision means that Saunders will be eligible for parole at the end of June.

He was convicted in a multimillion-pound illegal stock-support scheme that was designed to help the Anglo-Irish brewing giant Guinness PLC win a 1986 takeover battle for the Scotch whiskey group Distillers. Saunders earlier lost an appeal of 11 of his 12 convictions for conspiracy to create a false market, false accounting and theft.