PRESS DIGEST- New York Times business news - April 1
April 1 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
* The nation's top auto safety regulator will seek to cast blame on General Motors Co when he testifies on Tuesday before a House subcommittee looking into the ignition problem of Chevrolet Cobalts and other cars. In written testimony filed in advance, David Friedman, the acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, argues that "G.M. had critical information that would have helped identify this defect." (http://link.reuters.com/wac28v)
* Caterpillar Inc, the big American maker of heavy construction and mining equipment, used a subsidiary in Switzerland to avoid paying $2.4 billion of income taxes over 13 years, according to a Senate investigative report released on Monday. (http://link.reuters.com/xac28v)
* Author Michael Lewis in his new book "Flash Boys" talks about a perverse system on Wall Street that has allowed certain professional investors to pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year to locate their computer servers close to stock exchanges so they can make trades milliseconds ahead of everyone else. (http://link.reuters.com/tac28v)
* Workers at three Toyota Motor Corp assembly plants in Ontario will vote next week on whether to join Canada's largest union, an effort that could create the carmaker's only unionized shop in the country and the United States. (http://link.reuters.com/dec28v)
* Six years ago, Congress mandated auto safety regulators to pass a federal standard by 2011 that would help keep drivers from running over small children as they backed up their vehicles. On Monday, after three years of repeated delays and a lawsuit, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced the new rule: By May 2018, all new cars and light trucks must be equipped with rearview cameras. (http://link.reuters.com/hec28v)
* The Federal Communications Commission approved measures on Monday that will free up more airwaves for Wi-Fi and wireless broadband. The agency also moved to help curb increasing cable rates for consumers, but in doing so cracked down hard on the ability of broadcast stations to negotiate jointly in competition with cable systems. (http://link.reuters.com/mec28v) (Compiled by Arnab Sen in Bangalore)
