Author: starbpo

In order to stop the decline that has been happening in the country’s capital markets, the U.K.’s financial watchdog has changed the rules that govern its listed companies. This is the biggest change to the listing regime in more than 30 years. Thursday, the Financial Conduct Authority laid out the new rules it will use to oversee companies listed on Britain’s stock markets, such as the London Stock Exchange. These rules will start to apply on July 29, 2018. The change is meant to bring the U.K.’s listing rules in line with those of its international competitors. The goal is…

Wednesday, the government fined Citigroup Inc. $135.6 million because the bank didn’t follow through on a 2020 order that told it to improve how it manages risk and data quality. The Federal Reserve board and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency gave the fines. As Chief Executive Jane Fraser tries to make things easier at the bank by cutting back on business abroad and letting people go, they showed up. Fraser said the bank had made progress on compliance, but he also said it still had more work to do. Citgroup was given a $60.6 million fine by…

Do they still build new homes the way they used to? The people who check homes don’t believe that. When they first start looking for a house, some first-time buyers might think that newly built homes need less upkeep because they have never been lived in. But be careful, because several TikTok videos posted by home inspectors say that isn’t always true. The videos from all over the U.S. show the major problems that inspectors have found in newly built homes. They say that the videos show not only bad workmanship but also the real cost of building homes quickly…

If you read about celebrities, you can’t help but learn something about wills and estates. Their cautionary tales could fill a whole textbook. Eight years after Prince’s death, the fight over his estate is back in court, and famous “Basic Instinct” actress Sharon Stone just made headlines by saying that $18 million of her savings were lost when she was sick and in danger of dying more than 20 years ago. It’s always in the news that Jay Leno has filed for conservatorship over his wife Mavis, who has dementia. There are also ongoing stories about Brian Wilson and Britney…

As of Wednesday, software stocks are still going down, even though Wall Street is more optimistic about the chip sector. At the end of June, investors seemed to be moving some of their money out of semiconductor stocks and into the software sector. However, that trend has stopped this week, with several chip-sector indicators on track for record closes and the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF IGV heading for its third straight session of losses. CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. shares, which have been one of the best performers in the S&P 500’s first half, are down 4.6% today, making them the…

It has been years since efforts to stop lawmakers from trading stocks failed to gain enough support. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of four senators announced a new effort. Senators said they had agreed on a bill that would make it illegal for members of Congress, their spouses, and their children or dependents to buy, hold, or sell individual stocks. The bill, which is called the ETHICS Act, will be worked on by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Committee on July 24. A Democrat from Oregon, Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Republican from Missouri, and two Democrats from Georgia, Sen.…

Since 18 months ago, a lot of hype has been made about artificial intelligence and how it could change business profits and worker productivity. Now, Wall Street seems to be losing faith. Analysts are now taking a close look at the numbers that support the technology. They learned that the huge investments in capital expenditures being made by “hyperscalers”—big companies with big cloud-services businesses like Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +1.46%, Amazon.com AMZN, +0.23%, and Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, +1.16%—might not pay off for a long time, if ever. Some analysts even questioned the main ideas behind the “AI revolution.” Jim Covello, global…

It will cost about $5 trillion over 10 years to extend the 2017 tax cuts that end next year. However, millions of U.S. households will still have bigger tax bills even after paying that huge amount of money. A new study from the Tax Policy Center says that if parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are extended, they will leave 13% of middle-income households with higher taxes than they would have had the provisions expire as planned. That’s because when the tax code was changed in 2017, the standard deduction went up and the child tax credit doubled…

Tractor Supply Co., a store that caters to people who live in rural areas, was the latest company to back away from corporate diversity goals after conservatives criticized them. This week, the company said it would get rid of roles related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and retire its “current” goals for these areas. The company Tractor Supply TSCO, -1.40% also said it would stop giving information to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ civil rights group, and would stop supporting Pride festivals. It will also take back its goals for reducing carbon emissions. People have told us that we’ve…

Boeing Co. said that deliveries of commercial airplanes fell more than 30% from the same time last year to the second quarter, but they were better than the first quarter thanks to a strong June, and they beat Wall Street’s predictions. The drop from one year to the next is because Boeing has had to cut back on production because of safety issues and increased scrutiny from regulators. Along with that, Boeing agreed this week to plead guilty to fraud charges related to two 737 Max plane crashes. In midday trading, BA, -1.40% fell 0.3%, but that was less than…