Business news
Merrill Lynch fined $13.5 million
Merrill Lynch & Co. was fined $13.5 million by the states of New Jersey and Connecticut and the New York Stock Exchange, after a group of the company’s brokers engaged in improper market-timing of mutual funds, regulators announced Tuesday.
The NYSE said it determined that a group of brokers in Fort Lee, N.J., made more than 3,700 short-term mutual fund transactions from January through April 2002. The brokers used multiple accounts, all of which were held for a single hedge fund client, the NYSE said, and the accounts were transferred outside the firm and back in later that year.
According to a statement from the New Jersey attorney general’s office, Millennium Partners L.P. was the hedge fund involved in the incidents.
New Boeing jet takes test flight
Boeing Co.’s new 777-200LR, the longest-range commercial airplane, successfully completed its first test flight Tuesday.
The latest version of Boeing’s widebody 777 spent about three hours in the air, reaching an altitude of 15,000 feet, before touching down at Seattle’s Boeing Field, Boeing said in a statement. The airplane, which took off from Paine Field in Everett, will now continue flight testing in preparation for its first delivery in January 2006, to Pakistan International Airlines.
The airplane, which can carry up to 301 passengers, has a range of 10,840 miles, allowing it to fly nonstop between almost any two cities in the world, according to Chicago-based Boeing.
Truckers’ hours debated in Congress
Wal-Mart and other retailers are lobbying Congress to extend the workday for truckers to 16 hours, something labor unions and safety advocates say would make roadways more dangerous for all drivers.
Rep. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican whose district includes Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, is sponsoring a bill that would allow a 16-hour workday as long as the trucker took an unpaid two-hour break. The proposal is expected to be offered as an amendment during debate over the highway spending bill today.
“Truckers are pushing harder than ever to make their runs within the mandated timeframe,” Boozman said. “Optional rest breaks will reduce driver layovers and improve both safety and efficiency.”
Current rules limit drivers’ workdays to 14 hours, with only 11 consecutive hours of driving allowed, union leaders and safety advocates say. That gives truckers three hours to eat, rest or load and unload their trucks.
Critics of the proposal accuse Wal-Mart of trying to fatten its profits by forcing truckers to spend more time waiting at the loading dock without getting paid.