Report: Citi sat on hack attack news for weeks
The Citibank logo is shown on a New York branch office in this April 11, 2007 file photo.
/ AP Photo
Citing an anonymous source, The Wall Street Journal reported ($) on its website Monday that Citigroup Inc., spent a maximum of three weeks waiting to inform its credit card account holders of a security breach.
Customer service leaves buyers irked, survey says
Shoppers put bags in a car at a Walmart store March 29, 2011, in Valley Stream, N.Y.
/ Getty Images
Companies wanting to boost their bottom lines might want to first improve the kind of service they provide their customers, according to a Consumer Reports survey released Tuesday.
AOL, Equity Firms Exploring Bid for Yahoo
AP Photo
Yahoo Inc. could be bought by AOL Inc. and several private equity firms if a reported proposal possibility is actually carried out and approved.
Discussions about a formal buyout proposal include the firms, AOL executives and financial advisers but don't yet include Yahoo, The Wall Street Journal reported on its website ($) Wednesday night.
The newspaper named two firms -- Silver Lake Partners and Blackstone Group LP -- that "have expressed interest" in partnering with AOL to buy Yahoo or take the company private. People familiar with the proposal discussions told the Journal that at least two other firms might also express an interest in joining in; however, those sources emphasized that the possibility could fizzle out before Yahoo is even approached for a deal.
The newspaper contacted spokeswomen for AOL and Yahoo. They declined to comment. Blackstone also declined to comment. Silver Lake couldn't be reached for comment on the story.
Steven Rattner, Ex-Car Czar, Settles with SEC
AP Photo
The Obama administration's former car czar will settle a multiyear kickback investigation with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Steven Rattner, a New York financier, will pay more than $5 million in fines to the federal agency and will accept a ban from the securities industry for several years, The New York Times reported on its website Wednesday.
The settlement is expected to be announced Thursday, the Times reported. The settlement comes at the end of an investigation into kickbacks involving officials with New York state's pension fund.
Rattner is still negotiating a similar settlement with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the Times reported. Cuomo is the Democratic nominee in the Empire State's race for governor in this year's elections.
Report: Verizon to Pay $90M in Customer Refunds
AP Photo
Millions of Verizon Wireless cell phone customers will receive refunds totaling up to $90 million for wrongly charged data sessions on their phones.
The company will credit current customers in amounts between $2 and $6 each on their bills for October or November; former customers will receive refund checks in the same amounts, The New York Times reported on its website Sunday night.
The company told the Times the credits will go toward 15 million customers. The newspaper called the refunds one of the largest ever by a telecommunications company.
The refunds come after the company held talks with the Federal Communications Commission about complaints about the charges, the Times reported. The company has received the complaints for the last three years from customers who said they were charged for data usage or accessing the Internet when their phones weren't in use or when a button preprogrammed to access the Web was accidentally pressed, the newspaper reported.
Lawrence Summers Likely to Leave White House
Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council and President Obama's top economic adviser, is seen on "Face the Nation" April 25, 2010.
/ CBSTop White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers is expected to leave his post after November's mid-term elections, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.
The elections are expected to reduce Democrats' majorities in Congress if not cost President Obama's party one chamber of the Capitol, which would most likely be the House of Representatives. Summers serves as director of the president's National Economic Council.
Bloomberg reports that officials are considering replacing Summers with a corporate executive to combat against criticism that Mr. Obama is anti-business. The news organization attributed its report to three anonymous sources who said no decisions had been made.
Obama: Don't Call Me Anti-Business
CBS News Chief Political Consultant Marc Ambinder reports that a person close to Summers said his two-year leave from Harvard University is up and that his departure after the elections would be a natural point to do so.
At a town hall meeting in Washington Monday, Mr. Obama was asked whether Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would keep their posts, CBS Radio News Correspondent Mark Knoller reports.
"I have not made any determinations about personnel," Mr. Obama said on the meeting televised on CNBC. "I think Larry Summers and Tim Geithner have done an outstanding job as have my whole economic team."
Continue »Report: Obama Considers Tax Cuts to Boost Economy
CBS
On the morning after President Obama told Americans in a primetime address from the Oval Office on Iraq that getting the economy moving again was his "central responsibility as president," The Wall Street Journal ($) reported the administration is considering tax cuts to give the economy a boost.
Unnamed sources tell the newspaper that Mr. Obama's economic team might ask Congress for additional tax cuts for small businesses in addition to the $30 billion of similar cuts awaiting a vote in the Senate.
The Journal reports there's not a clear view of what kinds of small businesses would benefit from the yet-to-be-proposed cuts or how much revenue the government would lose.
The administration might also propose a payroll tax cut for businesses and individuals, the sources told the newspaper. Tax cuts passed by President George W. Bush are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, which would make income taxes rise.
Whether any major proposal will receive congressional approval between now and the pivotal mid-term elections is uncertain. The House and the Senate aren't scheduled to convene again until Sept. 13. Democratic aides on Capitol Hill told the newspaper that there's not much of a chance for any immediate action with the party's majorities at stake.
Fed Official Calls for Higher Interest Rates
Thomas Hoenig, president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve, called for a gradual hike in interest rates and the rate at which the Fed lends money to private banks in an interview with CBS News Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis. (Watch at left)
Hoenig is the only voting member of the Fed to call for increasing interest rates, Jarvis reports.
According to Bankrate.com, the average rate for money market and savings account last week is down to 0.83 percent, hurting people depending on the interest earned on this safest of investments, especially seniors, Jarvis reports. Three years ago, when interest rates were at 5.55 percent, $100,000 in a certificate of deposit could earn $5,550 a year. Today, the same CD earns only 1.55 percent, or $1,550, annually.
"It's important to realize that zero percent was a rate that was necessary during the crisis, and I think it served its purpose," said Hoenig. "But now we have to think beyond that to a little longer term, and there are adverse effects, I think, from zero being carried."
Continue »Britain Worries Attacks on BP Threaten Economy
CBS
Although BP officially dropped the name British Petroleum in 1998, the company remains such an integral part of the U.K. economy that British officials defend BP against the harsh treatment it's received on the American side of the Atlantic.
"The (U.K.) government must put down a marker with the US administration that the survival and long-term prosperity of BP is a vital British interest," Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to the United States, told the British Broadcasting Corp. last week.
Even on Wednesday, before it was reported that BP will pay $20 billion into a fund for victims of the massive oil spill, British Prime Minister David Cameron told BBC radio that he stressed to President Obama over the weekend that the company will need certainty about how much it will have to pay to meet "reasonable claims."
"As I discussed with the president, that while it is important that they pay reasonable claims -- BP accept this themselves -- they do need a level of certainty," Cameron said.
The April 20 explosion that killed 11 rig workers and caused the leak gushing thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico has turned into the Achilles heel in what many Britons considered a solid investment for pensions.
Continue »AIG Executives Not Targeted for Criminal Charges
Former American International Group executive Joseph Cassano
/ AP/CBSCBS News confirmed Friday night that federal prosecutors have informed attorneys for executives of American International Group Inc. that they are not targets of criminal charges.
The decision to conclude the two-year investigation into AIG executives comes after CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian first reported on April 6 that the Justice Department was likely to drop charges against Cassano.
The investigation focused on whether the insurer's executives deceived investors and its outside auditor about the company's risky investments in credit-default swaps partly tied to mortgages, the newspaper reports. Those investments nearly brought AIG down in 2008.
Continue »Report: Volcano Ash Cloud Costs U.S. $650 Million
This aerial photo shows a plume of ash rising from the volcano in southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier, Monday, April 19, 2010.
/ AP Photo/Jon GustafssonWhile the eruption of an Icelandic volcano appears to primarily affect airlines and passengers waiting for flights in and out of Europe to resume, the U.S. Travel Association estimates that the ash cloud produced by the eruption has cost the U.S. economy $650 million, approximately $130 million per day.
That kind of loss to the economy affects the cashflow to fund about 6,000 American jobs, the association said. Every international flight bound for the U.S. is worth an average of $450,000 in spending from travelers, which the association says pays for five jobs per flight.
"While safety must always be the primary consideration, economies, particularly those recovering from recession, cannot afford an overreaction that stifles travel completely," Roger Dow, the association's president and CEO, said in a statement.
More on Volcano Fallout: Ash and Travel Woes
Flights Go Airborne With Cheers, More Ash
To Fly or Not to Fly? That's No Easy Question
Millions of Stranded Travelers Given Hope
Volcano Spews Less Ash as Lava Boils Up
More Ash Fallout: 10 Million Roses Ruined
Volcanic Ash Puts Organ Transplants in Peril
Volcano Cloud's Impact: Some $2B and Counting
Stranded Travelers Seek Alternate Routes
Volcanic Eruption Grinds Modern World to a Halt
Video:
Amazing Images of Iceland Volcano
Abercrombie Lands on Black List
This Dec. 5, 2003, file photo shows an image from an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.
/ CBSIf the business model for clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. aims to sell the image that bad behavior makes life more fun then maybe the company will see an uptick in customers after Corporate Responsibility Magazine listed the business on its annual black list.
Investors, however, might take a different view of the magazine linking Abercrombie with 29 other businesses labeled as "examples of companies for whom zero points of relevant data can be found to compare its transparency to that of its colleagues on the Russell 1000 list of large-cap firms."
Continue »Out-of-Control Toyota Reports Multiplying
On Monday James Sikes, seen at left, drove his Toyota Prius down a southern California highway when he experienced something now familiar to many Toyota owners: his car was accelerating past his intended speed and wouldn't slow down.
That's when Sikes grabbed his phone dialed 911. (Listen to his call below left) While trying to keep the car under control and hold the phone to his ear, the Prius sped up to 94 miles per hour. Eventually the emergency dispatcher sent a California Highway Patrol car to him, and officers instructed him how to reduce his speed before they accelerated in front of him and — driving bumper-to-bumper — guided the car to a complete stop.
Just two weeks before the alarming incident, Sikes had brought his Prius into a dealership, recall notice in hand, to have a technician look under the hood, but the dealership turned him away.
As federal officials begin an investigation to determine what caused Sikes' Prius to race out of control, a congressional committee revealed Wednesday that investigators are also looking at an incident involving a Lexus in nearby San Diego, reports CBS News Correspondent Nancy Cordes.
Continue »Goldman Sued for Overpaying Executives
Goldman Sachs logo
The pension fund for an electrical workers' union wants to pull the plug on large executive compensations at Goldman Sachs, filing a lawsuit against the bank in a Delaware court.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers pension fund said the bank allocates about 47 percent of its 2009 revenue toward compensation, according to the Reuters news agency. The lawsuit aims to recoup some of the compensation for Goldman shareholders, saying the payments "vastly overcompensate management and constitute corporate waste."
Last week, Goldman said it would limit its compensations for last year at a 36 percent ratio or $16.2 billion. In early February, Goldman revealed it would pay CEO Lloyd Blankfein a $9 million stock bonus for 2009.
Continue »Expert: Toyota Will Restore Trust in 10 Years
(AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)
"Fixing the cars will be the easy part," Hogshead, author of "Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation," told Co-Anchor of CBS' "The Early Show" Harry Smith Thursday morning.
While the company has launched a public-relations offensive with full-page newspaper ads and television commercials addressing the recalls, Hogshead doesn't see Toyota ridding itself from its brake problems any time soon.
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