SEC charges ex-member of Goldman boardFederal regulators have charged former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta with insider trading, saying he gave confidential information to the key figure in what prosecutors call the largest hedge fund insider-trading probe ever. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Gupta told Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway planned to invest $5 billion in Goldman before it was publicly announced at the height of the financial crisis. Gupta also is charged with giving Rajaratnam confidential earnings information from Goldman and Procter & Gamble. Gupta was on Goldman's board from 2006 until last May. He was a P&G board member from 2007 until resigning Tuesday.
J. Crew shareholders say yes to $3B saleShareholders of J. Crew approved a $3 billion sale of the popular preppy retailer to private equity firms TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners, despite complaints from some of them that the sales process was flawed. At a short meeting of shareholders in New York, the company announced that 41 million shares, or about 64 percent of its outstanding stock, were voted in favor of the deal. About 36.4 million of those shares were held by investors outside of J. Crew's management or board.
Higher-paying industries slower to hireHigher-wage industries constitute 14 percent of recent private-job growth, though they accounted for 40 percent of private job losses during the labor-market's downturn, according to a new report from the New York-based worker advocacy group National Employment Law Project. Meanwhile, lower-wage industries are responsible for 49 percent of recent growth, compared with 23 percent of losses, while midrange-wage industries constitute 37 percent of growth, compared with 36 percent of losses. According to the group, for higher-paying industries, median wages range from about $19 to $31, compared with $9 to $13 for lower-wage industries.
Young grads head to Uncle Sam, nonprofitsAs job hunts became tough after the crisis, anecdotal evidence suggested that more young people considered public service. Exactly how big that shift was is now becoming clear: In 2009 alone, 16 percent more young college graduates worked for the federal government than in the previous year and 11 percent more for nonprofit groups, according to an analysis by the New York Times of data from the American Community Survey of the United States Census Bureau. A smaller Labor Department survey showed that the share of educated young people in these jobs continued to rise last year.
Street View now sometimes seen from trikeGoogle Inc. this week launched its largest-ever collection of Street View images taken by a humble but versatile vehicle -- the tricycle. Google's Street View service has mostly been limited to places where cars mounted with cameras can drive. But to extend Street View to places beyond the reach of its ubiquitous Toyota Prius fleet, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google is using ungainly, 250-pound, 9-foot-long, human-powered trikes with a 7-foot stalk of cameras on the back. The trikes were the brainchild of Google engineer Daniel Ratner, who visited cobblestone alleys impassible to cars in Barcelona, Spain, and realized Google needed something to record universities, parks, trails and other places cars can't go. "I feel like we're just scratching the surface of what sorts of images our users want to see," Ratner said.
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