1.GOOGLE:-Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Wednesday it will give an additional bonus to its employees globally this year, as the tech giant pushes back its return-to-office plan.
Google will give all employees, including the company’s extended workforce and interns, a one-time cash bonus of $1,600 or equivalent value in their country this month, a company spokesperson told Reuters.
The latest benefit is in addition to Google’s work-from-home allowance and wellbeing bonus, to support its employees during the coronavirus pandemic, the spokesperson said, without giving details on how much the company has set aside in total for the purpose.
Earlier in March, Google’s internal survey showed a drop in its employee wellbeing over the past year, after which the company announced a series of benefits, including a $500 wellbeing cash bonus.
2.Goldman Sachs:Goldman Sachs Group Inc must again face a class action by shareholders who said they lost $13 billion because the Wall Street bank hid conflicts of interest when creating risky subprime securities before the 2008 financial crisis, a judge ruled on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty in Manhattan rejected Goldman’s claim that its general statements about its business, including that client interests “always come first” and “integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business,” were too generic to mislead investors and affect its stock price.
3.DEUTSCHE BANK:-The U.S.Justice Department has told Deutsche Bank that it may have violated a criminal settlement when it failed to tell prosecutors about an internal complaint in its asset-management arm’s sustainable investing business, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The internal complaint alleged that DWS Group, Deutsche Bank’s asset manager, overstated how much it used environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria to manage its assets, the report said.
Deutsche Bank had agreed in January to pay nearly $125 million to avoid U.S. prosecution on charges it engaged in foreign bribery schemes and manipulated precious metals markets.
At that time, the lender entered a three-year deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), and a related civil settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, allowing it to avoid being indicted.
However, if the authorities were to conclude Deutsche Bank had breached the agreement and if they pursued the bank, it could lose its earlier deal and could also face indictment and prosecution, the Journal report said.
Officials in the United States could also ask the German bank to pay an additional fine, according to the report.
4.ASTRA ZENECA:The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the use of AstraZeneca ‘s antibody cocktail to prevent COVID-19 infections in individuals with weak immune systems or a history of severe side effects from coronavirus vaccines.
The antibody cocktail, Evusheld, is only authorized for adults and adolescents who are not currently infected with the novel coronavirus and have not recently been exposed to an infected individual, the regulator said.
The authorization for the therapy, made up of two monoclonal antibodies tixagevimab and cilgavimab, marks a significant step for AstraZeneca, whose widely used COVID-19 vaccine is yet to be approved by U.S. authorities.
AstraZeneca last month had agreed to supply the U.S. government with 700,000 doses of Evusheld, which had earlier shown to cut the risk of people developing any COVID-19 symptoms by 77% in a late-stage trial.
5.FACEBOOK :The chair of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday asked a regulator to investigate whether Meta Platforms’ Facebook misled its advertising customers and the public about the reach of its advertisements.
In a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan seen by Reuters, Senator Maria Cantwell said “evidence suggests that Facebook may have deceived its advertising customers about its brand safety and advertising metrics” and “may have engaged in deceptive practices.”
Meta and the FTC did not immediately comment.
Cantwell added that “public information suggests that Facebook’s potential misrepresentations about brand safety and advertising metrics may be unfair, as well as deceptive.”
