Japanese Takata and the US federal judicial authorities are nearing an agreement to settle criminal investigation on defective airbags. The supplier of automotive components is going to settle the case in January and is expected to pay a fine of up to $ 1 billion, writes The Wall Street Journal, citing sources close to discussion of the agreement. Eventual amount of penalty may be somewhat less...

American manufacturer of mobile processors Qualcomm has been fined more than $ 850 million for breach of antitrust laws. The company has been criticized worldwide for its business of licensing patents, reports The Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday, December 28, Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) announced that Qualcomm illegally restricted access to their patents for other chipmakers. Company...

US Amazon.com Inc., the world's largest online retailer, announced that it has shipped more than 1 billion products worldwide during this Christmas and New Year's holiday season. The company says the holidays have already become the best in history. Head of the company’s global consumer products division, Jeffrey A. Wilke, commented that intelligent voice assistant Amazon Echo and its smaller...

Production of gasoline and diesel fuel at Mongstad, the largest oil refinery of Norwegian group Statoil, has decreased by 50% due to a leak of refinery products occurred in November. A broken pipe, located at an altitude of 50 meters, has not yet been replaced because of strong winds, blowing on the west coast of the country in recent weeks. The company still has not officially informed the...

2016 was a difficult year for hedge funds. They were actively criticized, called exaggerated, and their results were disappointing. Famous managers, including Ray Dalio (founder of Bridgewater Associates) and John Paulson (Head of Paulson & Co), showed double-digit losses. At the same time, Jason Mudrick’s bond fund (founder of Mudrick Capital Managemen) earned good money on commodities...

American technology company Microsoft has a good chance to get market valuation of $ 1 trillion for the first time, according to Michael Markowski, an analyst at Equities. All the Redmond giant has to do is to double the value of its shares and continue developing professional social network LinkedIn. Now, the most valuable company in the world is Apple. In February 2016, volume of Apple's market...

Italian parliament allocates € 20 billion to save Monte dei Paschi. The funds will be received from a newly formed rescue fund, which was approved this week. The country’s Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan did not specify what proportion of these funds will be allocated to Monte dei Paschi, saying only that "the amount will be sufficient to meet needs identified by the stress tests." He added...

Volkswagen will pay about $ 1 billion to settle consequences of Dieselgate in the United States. The latest agreement, which the Federal Court confirmed on December 20, obliges the automaker to pay this amount to additionally repair or purchase additional 83,000 cars with 3-liter diesel engines. In accordance with a settlement agreement, approved by the end of October, Volkswagen promised to pay...

On Tuesday, Lloyds Banking Group stated its intention to purchase UK credit business of Bank of America MBNA for 1.9 billion pounds ($ 2.35 billion). This is the first major acquisition of the British bank since its bailout during the global recession. Lloyds, which is still partly owned by the UK government, is trying to expand its credit cards business in order to diversify its core mortgage...