Honda, Google in talks on self-driving vehicles
Honda is in talks with Google to install the tech company’s self-driving technology in Honda vehicles.
Honda says collaboration with the Google unit called Waymo would let researchers learn about integration of sensors, software and computers.
The automaker says that if a deal is reached, it will provide vehicles to Waymo that are modified to handle the technology. The Hondas would join Waymo’s fleet that includes Lexus SUVs and Chrysler Pacifica minivans.
Honda has said it intends to put autonomous vehicles on highways around 2020.
The potential partnership would be the latest in a flurry of autonomous vehicle deals recently between technology companies and automakers.
Google has been working on software and sensors since 2009 and has been testing autonomous cars on public roads for several years.
Goldman pays $120 million to settle manipulation charges
Goldman Sachs has been ordered to pay $120 million to settle federal regulators’ charges that it deliberately manipulated a global benchmark for interest-rate swaps to its advantage.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Wednesday that several Goldman traders, including the head of the bank’s Interest Rate Products Trading Group in the U.S., used trades and false reports to manipulate the benchmark between 2007 and 2012.
The CFTC cited emails and audio recordings in which Goldman traders “stated their manipulative goals in plain language.” The traders “even objected when their attempts to manipulate were not performed as inexpensively as possible,” the CFTC said.
The alleged manipulation centered on the U.S. Dollar International Swaps and Derivatives Association Fix, or Isdafix, which is used to set prices for interest-rate swaps. The swaps are derivatives that can be traded and used to protect against swings in interest rates.
Pension brokers charged with pay-for-play scheme
A former top official at the country’s third-largest pension fund and two broker-dealers were charged Wednesday in what a federal prosecutor described as a classic bribery scheme that steered $2 billion in trades in exchange for drugs, prostitutes, vacations and U.S. Open tennis tickets.
“The hard-earned pension savings of New Yorkers should never serve as a vehicle for corrupt, personal enrichment,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement, calling the alleged pay-for-play arrangement a “classic, quid-pro-quo bribery scheme.”
Navnoor Kang, the ex-head of the $184 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund’s fixed income trades, received more than $100,000 worth of bribes in the form of trips, gifts, luxury hotel stays and other payoffs from broker-dealers Deborah Kelley and Gregg Schonhorn, prosecutors said.
Kang, 38, was arrested in Portland, Ore., on securities fraud, honest service wire fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges. His attorney, Lauren DeSantis-Then, said her client denies all the charges. Kelley, 58, of Piedmont, Calif., was expected to surrender, authorities said. Her attorney didn’t immediately return a request for comment.