Volkswagen has agreed to pay its U.S. dealers up to $1.2 billion to compensate them for losses suffered as a result of the company's emissions cheating scandal, according to a settlement agreement filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco. The dealers are expected to receive about $1.85 million...
Shirley Zhang knows she can get a perfectly reliable Chinese dumpling from a restaurant chain such as Din Tai Fung. But to get that home-cooked taste — with dumpling skin that’s extra chewy and meat filling that’s always generous — the Chinatown resident turns to WeChat. The Chinese messaging app...
After Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive and Chairman John Stumpf was grilled by members of the Senate Banking Committee last week, regulators took the stand to answer senators’ questions about their investigation into the bank’s sales practices. But one key figure was missing from the action: Los...
Founded during the gold rush as a place that could be trusted with your money, Wells Fargo & Co. has deep California roots and remains one of the state’s largest and oldest institutions. But on Wednesday, the state’s treasurer announced he was cutting some business ties to the San Francisco bank...
Outraged lawmakers pressed Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen on Wednesday to punish Wells Fargo & Co. for creating as many as 2 millions fake accounts, but she declined to commit to any regulatory penalties. “Two million phony accounts. Break them up!” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Porter Ranch)...
Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive John Stumpf took the full brunt of congressional anger over the bank’s fake-accounts scandal at a Senate hearing last week and will face more outrage on Thursday before a House panel. But this time, he could share the villain’s role with a favorite target of House...
Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive John Stumpf will forfeit compensation worth about $45 million as the bank tries to appease angry lawmakers and regain the trust of customers amid the still-unfolding scandal over fake accounts. Stumpf will give up about 910,000 shares in unvested stock awards,...
The Labor Department has launched a “top-to-bottom review” of how Wells Fargo & Co. treated employees as it pushed the aggressive sales quotas that led to the bank’s fake-accounts scandal. A working group that includes officials from five Labor Department enforcement divisions has been established to...
Benjamin Franklin’s adage about death and taxes being the only certainties in this world long has required a footnote in California, where Proposition 13 has been chiseled into the tax structure since 1978. The ballot measure limited property taxes to 1% of assessed valuation, barred reassessments...
Ten Republican Congress members led by Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) have sent a letter to the heads of the Air Force, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration questioning whether SpaceX should be allowed to lead its own investigation into a Sept. 1 launch pad explosion that destroyed a Falcon...
Bank of America, like most of its industry brethren, portrays itself as a font of wisdom about how to secure your financial future (using its services, of course). So that leads us to wonder why it’s purveying some of the hoariest and most irrelevant cliches in the personal finance game about how...
If all goes well, American Airlines passengers won’t realize that the Fort Worth-based airlines took a key and potentially tricky step on Saturday in its merger with US Airways. The combination of American Airlines and US Airways to create the world’s largest carrier was announced in 2013, but...
Apple Inc. is reportedly planning to open its first research and development center in China, allowing the tech giant to extend its reach in a vital market and maintain goodwill with the Chinese government. The Cupertino tech giant will eventually invest 300 million yuan, or $45 million, in the...
Anyone hoping his employer is planning to put more into raises and bonuses next year is likely to be disappointed. Human resources consulting firm Aon Hewitt's annual U.S. salary increase survey predicts that base salaries and bonuses for U.S. workers won't budge in 2017, despite a better job market...
I was overcome by the most powerful sense of deja vu during my first half hour in the 2017 GMC Acadia AWD Denali. I knew I'd never driven one — I hadn't driven any GMC product since a Jimmy pick-up I owned in the 1970s — but it felt eerily familiar. Then I remembered: It’s basically a rebadged,...
Worries over the financial stability of Deutsche Bank returned to the fore Friday, sending shares in Germany's biggest bank to a record low and rekindling broader concerns about Europe's financial sector. Reports that hedge funds are moving their business out of the bank were the catalyst to the...
Consumer spending barely grew in August after a sharp rise the previous month as incomes rose by the smallest amount since winter, the Commerce Department said Friday. Analysts had expected Americans to slow their pace of spending following strong 0.4% growth in July. But the growth of less than...
Cadillac has nailed it. The 2017 CT6 3.0 TT Platinum, the General Motors subsidiary’s top-trim-level luxury grand touring sedan, is a sublime combination of power, performance and perks. Especially perks. Despite the many pleasures of driving this car, the real action is in the back seat. This...
A prominent Bunker Hill high-rise has changed hands for a premium price topping $50 million, signaling that downtown Los Angeles’ residential renaissance is boosting the area’s long-soft commercial office market. A Los Angeles investment group purchased the 15-story Chase Plaza at 888 W. 6th St. from...
Art Weber’s 5-year-old, Whitney, has a serious allergy to bee stings, so he and his wife are among the many people who shell out roughly $600 annually for a two-pack of EpiPens. Whitney, however, isn’t a little girl. She’s a beagle that could go into shock without a prompt dose of life-saving epinephrine....
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Robert Gadimian, a former executive at Los Angeles’ Puma Biotechnology, with making nearly $1.2 million by illegally trading on confidential information about an experimental breast cancer drug. The agency said Thursday that Gadimian, who was Puma’s...
California Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday signed a bill that’s designed to give widows and widowers a better shot at saving their homes when they fall behind on mortgage payments. Senate Bill 1150 boosts protections against foreclosure for surviving spouses who own their home but are not on its mortgage...
Alaska Airlines, which is aiming to become the dominant carrier on the West Coast with its planned acquisition of Virgin America, will begin offering the only daily nonstop flights from Los Angeles to Havana starting Jan. 5. Alaska was among several major carriers that applied for limited slots...
Qualcomm is reportedly in talks to buy NXP Semiconductor for about $30 billion in what could be a transformative deal for the San Diego wireless company. Citing unnamed sources familiar with talks, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the two companies are in discussions. A Qualcomm spokeswoman...
Crop dusting and many other forms of pesticide spraying will be banned within a quarter of a mile of schools and child day-care centers during the bulk of daylight hours, under a rule proposed by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. The proposed regulation, which would take effect...
The Los Angeles city attorney has reached a $13.5-million settlement with U.S. Bank to resolve allegations that the nation’s fifth-largest bank operated as a slumlord and allowed hundreds of foreclosed properties to deteriorate, fostering crime and blight in L.A. neighborhoods slammed by the housing...
Sen. Elizabeth Warren accused the Education Department on Thursday of moving forward with debt collection against nearly 80,000 former students of Corinthian Colleges, despite federal and state findings that the now-defunct for-profit chain defrauded students. The Massachusetts Democrat sent a...
The reputation of Wells Fargo & Co. took another blow Thursday when it agreed to pay $24 million for the improper repossession of cars owned by members of the U.S. military. The bank agreed to pay $4.1 million to settle a Justice Department investigation into the repossession of 413 cars without...
U.S. stocks skidded Thursday as drug companies and banks absorbed large losses. Drugmakers faced scrutiny over price increases, while banks fell as investors worried about the stability of Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions. Stocks fell hard on renewed concerns about Germany's largest...
Nearly 7 million workers for California companies will be automatically enrolled in a new state-run retirement program under a bill signed Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown. The law requires all California companies with at least five employees to enroll their workers in the new California Secure Choice...
Police in northern Germany say that a Tesla driver is blaming the car's Autopilot after crashing into the rear of a bus on a highway. But Tesla — which has been facing scrutiny after a spate of Autopilot-related incidents — says its semiautonomous driving feature was not at fault. A Tesla spokeswoman said...
A woman who became disruptive on a flight from New York to Los Angeles last month forced an American Airlines flight, carrying 97 passengers, to return to John F. Kennedy International Airport. What caused the woman to lose her cool is still unclear but such incidents are on the rise. In 2015,...
One Georgia mom was pulling clothes from the dryer, with her 4-year-old son nearby, when she heard the boom and saw the damage. Another woman thought something had crashed through her roof. In one instance, metal shards flung into a hallway and ripped holes in the wall. Laundry rooms have flooded....
The California housing market is expected to grow increasingly unaffordable next year, driving would-be home buyers away from high-cost coastal regions and toward the more inexpensive inland stretches of the state, according to an industry forecast. The California Assn. of Realtors on Thursday...
More than three in four Americans believe that prescription drug prices are unreasonable, a new poll shows. And large majorities — including Democrats and Republicans — favor aggressive government steps to make pharmaceuticals more affordable for consumers, according to the survey by the nonprofit...
In a sign of growing interest in Los Angeles County as a major biomedical hub, the California Life Sciences Assn. has opened an office in Monrovia. It also this week announced partnerships with two organizations in the L.A. region — LA BioMed, a nonprofit research institute in Torrance, and the...
Energy companies powered to big gains Wednesday, leading the broader stock market higher, on reports that OPEC nations were moving closer to an agreement to cut oil production. Stocks switched between gains and losses for most of the day, and most industries did not move much. Energy companies...
OPEC nations reached a preliminary agreement Wednesday to curb oil production for the first time since the global financial crisis eight years ago, pushing up prices that had sunk over the past two years and weakened the economies of oil-producing nations. Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada, Qatar's energy...
At Experian DataLabs in San Diego, a team of scientists is thwarting bad guys with math. A top-five U.S. credit card issuer recently dumped about 6 billion transaction records on Experian DataLabs to see if its machine-learning mathematical formulas could do a better job of rooting out credit...
SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk has finally laid out his plans to eventually transport up to a million people to colonize Mars. But there are more than a few hurdles he’ll have to clear first. In a speech Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Musk presented...
Former U.S. Solicitor Gen. Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who successfully defended President Obama’s healthcare plan before the Supreme Court, is joining the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson. Verrilli, 59, will lead the firm’s new Washington office. “This firm has an extraordinary reputation,...
Chicago media company Tribune Media Co. has sold a trio of properties for a combined $430 million, including the Los Angeles Times building in downtown Los Angeles. The sale of Times Mirror Square to Onni Group paves the way for the redevelopment of a historic building the paper has called home...
A deal worth more than $100 billion to combine the world's two biggest beer companies cleared its last major hurdle Wednesday when the shareholders of SABMiller approved the takeover by Budweiser maker Anheuser-Busch InBev. SABMiller shareholders approved the $103-billion deal — dubbed Megabrew...
Being an early tech adopter meant Vibhu Norby always had the latest gadgets. Before hoverboards were all the rage, the Bay Area engineer had already ordered his own online and envisioned himself whizzing around town doing errands on two wheels. But as with so many things ordered online, when the...
Once-dominant smartphone maker Blackberry Ltd. said it will stop developing its phones in-house and shift that work to outside companies so it can focus on software manufacturing. In a regulatory filing Wednesday, the Canadian company said it plans to “end all internal hardware development” on...
If Ford, Volvo, GM and Uber are to be believed, self-driving cars will soon dominate our roads and car ownership will be a thing of the past. If regular consumers are to be believed, automakers need to hold their horses, because people aren’t ready for a self-driving future. Those are the findings...
The dearth of housing in California will put a drag on the state’s economic growth, according to two new studies. California will continue to pile on jobs in 2017, but its advantage over the rest of the country will shrink in the future, say a report from UC Riverside and another from UCLA. The...
A hacking group that claimed responsibility for leaking sensitive documents from a Century City investment bank threatened Tuesday to divulge more data if the firm failed to pay a ransom. Seventeen files dated as recently as this month surfaced online last weekend, including background checks listing...
SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. said it would spend $175 million on new attractions, including a documentary-style orca encounter in San Diego to replace the theatrical Shamu shows that have been the park’s signature draw for half a century. The substantial investment in new rides and marine mammal...
U.S. stocks rebounded Tuesday and climbed after a survey showed consumer confidence is at a nine-year high, a sign Americans will keep spending in the months to come. Technology and consumer stocks made the largest gains. The market opened lower after two days of losses but quickly recovered. The...
Sea Launch, a satellite launcher that has flung rockets into space from a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean and has its home port in Long Beach, is being acquired by a Russian firm. S7 Group, a private aviation holding company, said it signed an agreement Tuesday with Sea Launch Group to acquire...
Online lending start-up LendUp, which has billed itself as a better and more affordable alternative to traditional payday lenders, will pay $6.3 million in refunds and penalties after regulators uncovered widespread rule-breaking at the company. The California Department of Business Oversight,...
The top civilian drone maker’s latest model is small enough to slip into purses and controllable with just a smartphone. The Mavic Pro represents a significant leap for Chinese start-up DJI, whose Phantom and Inspire offerings dominate the camera drone market. The unveiling of the Mavic Pro on...
Mobile game maker SGN renamed itself Jam City last week, seeking to inject more fun into its brand. For a start-up that makes colorful matching and bubble-bursting games including Juice Jam and Panda Pop, SGN — short for Social Gaming Network — came off as a stodgy and dull, the Culver City company...
One is an entertainment giant famous for exacting tight control over its content. The other is a tech firm whose commitment to free speech has earned it a reputation as a hub for news and a haven for online harassment. Together, they make for a brow-raising pairing. But stranger things have happened...
As beleaguered banking giant Wells Fargo & Co. deals with inquiries from federal prosecutors and scrutiny from lawmakers, it’s facing a growing number of civil lawsuits brought by customers and former employees. In a little more than two weeks since the San Francisco bank admitted that employees...
The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit accusing a fast-growing Silicon Valley software company of systematically discriminating against Asian job applicants. Palantir Technologies was co-founded by prominent tech financier Peter Thiel, with backing from an investment arm of the CIA, and...
Cooler weather, dinosaurs and deep-fried hot sauce balls helped push attendance up 3% at this year’s Los Angeles County Fair. The annual celebration of carnival rides and outrageously fattening foods drew 1.32 million guests, up from 1.28 million last year at the Fairplex at Pomona. The fair, which...
U.S. stocks slumped Monday, and banks took the biggest losses. Deutsche Bank plunged as investors worried about the financial health of Germany's largest bank. Pfizer pulled drugmakers down after it announced it won't break up into two companies. Stocks fell for the second day in a row. Banks were...
All those cars on California's famously gridlocked highways could be doing more than using energy. They could be producing it. The California Energy Commission is investing $2 million to study whether piezoelectric crystals can be used to produce electricity from the mechanical energy created by...
The U.S. hotel industry’s robust recovery from the recession is expected to slow down next year partly because of growing competition from short-term rental companies like Airbnb. That is one of the conclusions of a Moody’s Investor Service analysis that provided a rare look at data on how short-term...
As if he doesn’t have enough on his plate with solving the mystery of an exploding rocket and tweaking Tesla’s driver-assistance software, SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk will discuss plans for colonizing Mars at a space conference in Mexico on Tuesday. In a highly-anticipated speech titled “Making...
Small-satellite launch firm Rocket Lab has completed its New Zealand launch complex ahead of a first test flight expected this year. The Los Angeles rocket company’s Launch Complex One is located on the Mahia Peninsula on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island. The pad will be the primary...
One month after surging to their highest level in nearly nine years, sales of new homes nationwide retreated in August, with the exception the west, the Commerce Department reported Monday. Sales of newly built houses in the west jumped 8% from a month earlier, while nationwide sales dropped 7.6%...
Lawmakers were skeptical last week when Mylan’s chief executive said that the company made only $100 in profit for a two-pack of EpiPens. During a House hearing, she repeatedly referred to a poster board showing how little of the $608 list price trickled back to the company. The incredulity was...
Elon Musk said SpaceX successfully tested its Raptor rocket engine that might one day be used to transport people to Mars. SpaceX “achieved first firing of the Raptor interplanetary transport engine,” Musk said Sunday night on Twitter. The engine is powered by methane and liquid oxygen. The disclosure...
Ample free food and other perks are nice, but it’s stock options and lofty missions that often seduce people into joining tech start-ups. That’s why Jeff Green will never forget the excited expressions on employees’ faces last month when he told them their advertising software company would go...
When it comes to marketing your small business, a digital strategy is vital, but so are traditional marketing and advertising tactics like print advertising and direct mail. In fact, nearly a third of all small business owners still use those formats, while one in five say they don't plan to use...
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A new survey reveals that more than two-thirds of small business owners think taking a personal vacation ultimately benefits their business. However, despite knowing the importance and benefits of unplugging completely from work, only 25 percent of SBOs are able to do so. While they seldom rest,...