| CATEGORY: INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES |
US paper round up: Bernanke, Google, Apple |
|
Thu 18 Mar 2010
|
LONDON (SHARECAST) - Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, appealed to Congress to preserve the central bank’s supervision of the financial system as lawmakers consider removing some of the Fed’s powers. The Fed would lose oversight of banks with less than $50bn in assets in a bill by Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, which was introduced this week and will go to a mark-up next week, says the FT.
HTC Corp., the Taiwan-based manufacturer of Google's Nexus One cellphone, says it plans to mount an aggressive defense against a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Apple. Apple filed suits early this month alleging HTC devices including the Nexus One violated 20 of its patents, writes the Wall Street Journal.
The executive hired by Wall Street to enforce its rules is stepping down after nearly three years in which the organization's disciplinary actions and fines against the brokerage industry have declined, the group said. Susan Merrill, the head of enforcement at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street's self-regulatory body, hasn't set a departure date and hasn't indicated whether she had another job lined up, people familiar with the matter said, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Four banks were charged with fraud on Wednesday for their roles in a €1.7bn ($2.3bn) financing package for the Italian city of Milan in a case that will fuel the global debate about the use of complex derivatives. UBS, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Germany’s Depfa will face trial in Milan after a judge ruled there was sufficient evidence for them to face criminal charges of aggravated fraud for their role in devising a swaps package for the city’s 2005 bond issue, says the FT.
Wachovia Bank reached a $160 million settlement with the Justice Department over allegations that a failure in bank controls enabled drug traffickers to launder drug money by transferring money from Mexican currency-exchange houses to the bank, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Is $80-a-barrel oil the new $60? The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries hopes so. The oil cartel met in Vienna on Wednesday and decided to leave well enough alone, making no changes in production quotas and praising the current world crude-oil price of about $80 as high enough to spur new exploration and production and low enough to avoid killing the global economy's fragile recovery, says the Washington Post.
Sallie Mae, the student loan giant, sold $1.5 billion of unsecured bonds Wednesday in its first such offering since June 2008. The deal, another milestone in the recovery of the financial markets, attested to investors' appetite for corporate debt that borders on junk status, analysts said, according to the Washington Post.
Virgin America, which started flying in 2007, said Thursday that it made arrangements to lease nine additional Airbus jetliners, allowing it to announce new service to Orlando, Fla., and Toronto. The company also said it will launch three additional destinations later this year, writes the Wall Street Journal.
Amazon.com has threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online unless they agree to a detailed list of concessions regarding the sale of electronic books, according to two industry executives with direct knowledge the discussions, reports the NY Times.
The Senate cleared an $18 billion jobs bill for President Obama's signature Wednesday, a down payment on what Democrats hope will be a significant election-year investment in boosting the economy, according to the Washington Post.
A week after the disclosure that Lehman Brothers used an unconventional accounting technique to make its balance sheet look stronger than it was in the months before its collapse, lawmakers Wednesday attacked the federal regulators who failed to detect and halt the practice, says the Washington Post.
Former KB Home chief Bruce Karatz engineered a massive stock option scheme that made him millions of dollars and then fought to keep it secret from investigators, a longtime company executive testified Wednesday, writes the LA Times.
A UN anti-corruption task force has accused an Italian executive and a former UN official of taking bribes from a US security contractor seeking to do business with the United Nations, according to a confidential UN letter obtained by the Washington Post.
The government is announcing a recall of some 1.2 million high chairs, saying they pose a fall hazard to children. The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the voluntary recall Thursday involving the product made by Graco Children's Products of Atlanta, according to USA Today.
Sears Holding said Wednesday that more than 7,000 job openings at Sears and Kmart will be posted on Twitter, a move experts say is a way to advertise and market its brands to 18- to 34-year-olds, the mainstay of the social networking site, writes the Chicago Tribune.
|
|
| |
|
 |
Archived Stories |
 |
|
Front Page Stories |
|
|
