BUSINESS BRIEFS
Banks to rethink managing risk
Advertiser Staff and News Services
WASHINGTON — A sweeping regulatory plan to improve risk management for the country's largest and most internationally active banks is important to making sure the U.S. financial system remains sound, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said yesterday.
Years in the making, the proposal, dubbed Basel II, would instruct such big banks to use complex new risk formulas to determine capital requirements.
The Fed chief made his remarks before the American Bankers Association's Stonier Graduate School of Banking at Georgetown University.
The aim of the proposal is to more closely match the risk in big banks' portfolios with the capital they hold in reserves.
NORTHWEST STRIKE THREAT REDUCED
MINNEAPOLIS — Bankrupt Northwest Airlines Corp. and its flight attendants reached a sort of truce yesterday, with a new round of talks planned and threat of a strike forestalled.
The negotiations to begin tomorrow will defuse, for now, a showdown that began June 6 when 80 percent of voting flight attendants rejected pay cuts and changes to work rules their union leaders had negotiated to save the airline $195 million annually.
GOOGLE UPGRADES MAPPING TOOLS
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google Inc. yesterday released the latest upgrades to the mapping tools that rank among the company's biggest successes outside the search engine that steers much of the Web's traffic.
The improvements include a major expansion of the satellite imagery included in Google's 3-D software for touring Earth.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said four times more land will be covered in the latest version of its free Google Earth software, enabling about one-third of the world's population to obtain an aerial view of their homes and neighborhood.
More than 100 million people have downloaded Google Earth software since it was offered a year ago, according to figures released by the company for the first time yesterday.
MONSTER PARENT FACES INQUIRY
NEW YORK — The parent of job search site Monster .com was subpoenaed yesterday by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York over the timing of stock options grants to executives.
Earlier in the day, Monster Worldwide Inc. had announced it opened an internal investigation of all its stock option grants. The company often granted options dated before steep rises in its share price, a report published yesterday said.
The statement came after The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday on possible backdating of stock options at the company.
