Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin said Wednesday he had fined Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. $17.5 million for allegedly failing to disclose conflicts of interest related to collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, before the financial crisis. CDOs were widely created by Wall Street firms in the run-up to the crash in 2008; these investments are sliced up pieces of debt, many of them mortgage-related, that are repackaged and sold as securities. Many of these investments plummeted in value as the housing market slumped. St. Patrick’s Day revelers can rest easy --- that’s because shipments of stout and some Irish whiskeys are running smartly ahead of last year’s levels. So concludes Panjiva, a firm with offices in New York and Cambridge that analyzes bills of lading for ships bringing goods to the United States. According to Panjiva, stout shipments are running nearly 5 percent above last year’s levels, and shipments of Jameson are up 430 percent on a year-to-year basis. Fidelity Investments, the Boston-based financial services company, said Wednesday that more than 10 million of its customers will now have increased access to investment tools and products thanks to a new strategic alliance with BlackRock Inc. BlackRock’s iShares business unit is a provider of Exchange Traded Funds, or ETFs, and the alliance will give Fidelity customers improved access to a range of commission-free ETF investments. Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali have been awarded the 2012 ACM A.M. Turing Award for their pioneering work in enabling secure Internet transactions, the Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, said Wednesday. “By formalizing the concept that cryptographic security had to be computational rather than absolute, they created mathematical structures that turned cryptography from an art into a science,” ACM said. XL Hybrids Inc., a Boston-based provider of a low-cost hybrid electric powertrain designed for commercial fleet vehicles, said Wedesday that it has raised $4 million in a series B investment round. The round led by private investors, with previous investors also participating in the round, the company said in a press release. According to XL Hybrids, its hybrid electric powertrain reduces fuel consumption by 20 percent and can be installed in both new and existing vehicles. Arcadia Solutions LLC, a Burlington-based provider of data-driven health information technology services, announced the appointment of Sean Carroll as chief executive, effective April 1. Carroll joins Arcadia from Nuance Communications, a company known for its speech-recognition technology; at Nuance, he served as senior vice president of health information management. Northshore Mall in Peabody said that new stores Crumbs Bake Shop, Motherhood Maternity, and Sleep Number by Select Comfort are now open, and The Art of Shaving and Zumiez are coming soon. Crumbs Bake Shop specializes in “signature size cupcakes” and “comfort-oriented classics,” the mall said in a press release. One of the bakery’s marketing mantras: “They’re Freakin’ Huge.” | | |
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