FILE – In this Oct. 5, 2015, file photo, the VW sign of Germany’s Volkswagen car company is displayed at the building of a company’s retailer in Berlin. Attorneys for Volkswagen are due in federal court, and the judge overseeing hundreds of class-action lawsuits against the company is expecting an answer about how it plans to bring nearly 600,000 diesel cars into compliance with clean air laws. Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer is scheduled to get an update from the company’s attorneys about its remediation efforts at a status conference on Thursday, March 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File) VW expects settlement with U.S. next month
Volkswagen hopes to reach a final settlement with the U.S. authorities over the diesel emissions scandal in June so that it can launch of several new crossover and electric vehicles, company sales chief Juergen Stackman said in a published interview Thursday.
Reuters news service said VW wants to expand its electric-vehicle offerings in the United States to meet a growing demand for green cars and help restore its image.
“A final agreement with U.S. authorities would certainly provide relief and, at the same time, give the go-ahead to look and plan ahead,” Stackmann said.
Reuters said VW reached an outline agreement with the U.S. authorities last month to buy back or fix about a half million polluting diesel cars and set up environmental and consumer compensation funds. A final deal must be reached by June 21 to meet a court deadline.
Crye-Leike employees head into an annual meeting where Harold Crye plans on speaking about the housing outlook and how his real estate company did in 2011.Crye-Leike ranked 6th biggest real estate firm
Memphis-based Crye-Leike, the largest real estate company in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and the Mid-South, has retained its No. 6 ranking among the nation’s largest and most successful residential real estate brokerage firms.
RISMedia’s 2015 Power Broker Report ranked Crye-Leike No. 6 among the top 500 largest residential real estate brokerage firms in the United States. This ranking was based on Crye-Leike achieving 28,595 closed residential transactions by its 2,822 sales associates among its 84 branch offices in 2015.
Chief Executive Officer Harold E. Crye credits the company’s success and No. 6 national ranking to its continued investment in technology, marketing and providing the company’s sales force with live and online training and the right resources to increase business.
“We maintain an in-house team of information technology specialists who harness the technical and global power of the Internet to reach home buyers and to enhance our agents’ productivity and customer transactions,” said Crye. “We never stop innovating to adapt to the ever changing dynamics of the real estate services world. And our numbers prove it with our company website averaging over 12,000 visitors per day and over 30 million hits per month.”
Jobless claims rise to 15-month high
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level since February 2015, more sobering news for the labor market after a disappointing April jobs report.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that applications for jobless aid rose by 20,000 to a seasonally adjusted 294,000. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose by 10,250 to 268,250, the highest in nearly three months.
Jobless claims are a proxy for layoffs. Despite last week’s increase, they remain low. They have come in below 300,000 for 62 straight weeks, the longest streak since 1973.