ECONOMY
IRS receives more aid payments after previous delays
The Internal Revenue Service said it was getting more of the second round of taxpayers relief payments after initial problems. The government began distributing payments worth $ 600 per eligible adult and dependent in late December. However, many people who had submitted their taxes to an online tax preparation service initially found that they did not receive their payment directly. This is because money may have been transferred to a temporary bank account set up by the tax advisor that is no longer active. The law requires the financial institution to return payments sent to closed or inactive accounts. The National Consumer Law Center estimates that up to 20 million Americans could be affected by the administrative problem. A number of tax preparation companies said they could solve the problems. H&R Block said its customer payments were processed starting Jan. 6. Barring special cases, H&R Block said its customers should have received their payments by now. TurboTax announced that payments for customers affected by the bug were deposited on Friday. The IRS announced Tuesday that it had worked over the weekend to help a smaller group of affected taxpayers and was reissuing payments to eligible taxpayers whose accounts may have been closed. – RELATED PRESS
AVIATION
The beleaguered aircraft manufacturer sees an upward trend
Boeing Co. saw an increase in new aircraft orders and deliveries in December, but it wasn’t enough to save the big aircraft maker from a bad year. Chicago-based Boeing was still reporting more cancellations than new orders for its 737 Max jet, which was suspended for 21 months after 346 people were killed in accidents in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Boeing ended 2020 with 157 deliveries, compared to 380 deliveries in 2019. Deliveries are critical as aircraft manufacturers get a lot of their money from delivering aircraft. Boeing borrowed little money during Max’s inception, borrowing billions and shedding thousands of jobs to cut costs. The decision by the Federal Aviation Administration in November to approve changes to a flight control system for the Max allowed Boeing to ship the Maxes it had previously built back to airline customers. Boeing delivered 39 aircraft in December, including 28 Maxes, 10 of which went to American Airlines and eight to United Airlines. However, Boeing also reported canceled orders for 105 Max aircraft, all but five from leasing companies, who fear it will be difficult to find operators to take over the aircraft. Boeing said it had an order backlog of nearly 3,300 unfulfilled orders for the Max and around 4,200 for all aircraft, including cargo carriers. – RELATED PRESS
GOVERNMENT
Census warned of cybersecurity
A US Census Bureau surveillance agency said there was no adequate information technology security in place until the 2020 census began last year. However, the statistical office denies some of the results, saying that no data has been compromised. According to the report released by the Inspectorate General last week, there were a significant number of IT risks that remained open prior to the start of any US resident’s headcount. The Census Bureau was able to fix some security flaws after being alerted to them by the Inspectorate General, and others were corrected just before most U.S. citizens started answering the 2020 census questionnaire in March, the report said. “The integrity of the census data is critical,” the report said. “If the population were manipulated, the representation in the House of Representatives and the distribution of federal funds could be disproportionately distributed.” The Census Bureau said there had been no data loss or compromise and that the loopholes identified by the Inspectorate General had been addressed before most households began responding in March. – RELATED PRESS
CAR INDUSTRY
Former Audi boss accused the engineers in court of diesel scandals
Former Audi boss Rupert Stadler, who was brought to court on charges of the Volkswagen AG diesel scandal, blamed the engineers for not detecting widespread fraud in emissions tests. Stadler told a Munich court that the engineers had not provided the executive board of the VW Group’s luxury car unit with enough information to uncover the fraud. The 57-year-old is the first of several high-ranking VW executives to be tried in Germany over the diesel scandal that cost the company at least 39 billion US dollars. A separate process against the former VW boss Martin Winterkorn (73) and other suspects in the city of Braunschweig is to begin next month. Stadler’s statement stayed close to the usual corporate defense that any engine tampering was the fault of a group of rogue engineers. He told the court that instead of cleaning up like their colleagues at VW after the fraud was discovered in September 2015, leading Audi engineers were still using “salami tactics” to bypass internal controls. He said this meant the engineers were just giving information rather than giving the full picture. Stadler has been accused of not stopping the sale of affected diesel vehicles in Europe, even after US authorities uncovered engine upgrades to bypass emissions tests. – BLOOMBERG NEWS
FINANCIAL
Court overturns bank employees
A federal appeals court overturned the convictions of four former executives that the only financial institution was prosecuted in connection with the rescue program for Bundesbanken. A three-judge panel on Tuesday overturned former Wilmington Trust executives’ convictions of having made false statements to federal regulators and ordered acquittals to be recorded. The court also ordered a retrial for conspiracy and securities fraud. The ruling marks a startling reversal in the government’s case against former Wilmington Trust President Robert Harra Jr., former CFO David Gibson, former loan chief William North and former controller Kevyn Rakowski. You were convicted of fraud, conspiracy and false testimony in 2018. The bank itself also faced criminal charges, but reached a $ 60 million settlement with prosecutors when a trial was due to begin. Prosecutors said that in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, senior executives misled regulators and investors about Wilmington Trust’s vast number of past due commercial real estate loans before the bank was hastily sold in 2011 and neared collapse. Founded in 1903 by members of the DuPont family, the bank imploded despite receiving $ 330 million from the Troubled Asset Relief program. – RELATED PRESS
REAL PROPERTY
The vacancy rate in San Francisco is higher than in the 2008 crisis
The San Francisco office market has been so badly hit by the pandemic that by some standards it is worse than the global financial crisis or the dotcom collapse. According to a report by commercial real estate agent Cushman & Wakefield, the city’s vacancy rate at the end of 2020 was 16.7 percent, 11 percentage points higher than the previous year. That’s higher than after the 2008 recession. The vacancy rate is determined by a record amount of sublet space, surpassing the worst of the dot-com bust two decades ago, said Robert Sammons, senior director of research at Cushman in San Francisco. In addition, the new leasing was practically interrupted and in 2020 it reached its lowest annual level since at least the early 1990s. Companies have reassessed their office needs after months of pandemic lockdowns showed them it was possible to work with employees who work from home. This has led to an increase in vacancies, especially in cities like New York and San Francisco, where the cost of renting space is higher. In particular, the tech companies that dominate the Bay Area have embraced remote working. Pinterest Inc. paid nearly $ 90 million last year to cancel a large office rental in San Francisco. Oracle Corp. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. relocate their headquarters from Silicon Valley to Texas. This is the latest in a series of departures from the expensive region. – BLOOMBERG NEWS