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Businesses

Submission + - Threadneedle systems catch $150m rogue trader (computerworlduk.com) 1

DMandPenfold writes: Established asset manager Threadneedle, based in the City of London, has said its systems successfully caught a junior rogue employee who attempted to make a suspected $150 million (£95 million) rogue trade.

The issue occurred last August, and Threadneedle has said it alerted authorities and dismissed the alleged rogue trader, who has not been named.

The City of London Police is now investigating the incident, alongside other authorities thought to include financial regulator the FSA. The trade was reportedly around Argentine financial products.

IT systems, alongside management, are often the focus of attention when rogue trading events are reported — financial firms are expected to have the infrastructure in place to effectively monitor traders and identify suspicious activities.

Recent multibillion pound alleged rogue trades at UBS and rogue trades at Societe Generale had prompted concerns that many banks did not have effective enough monitoring and behaviour detection software in place, to aid management.

Threadneedle, which manages around $60 billion of assets, said: "In August 2011, our systems stopped a suspicious attempted trade. The matter was immediately reported to the authorities and the individual involved was subsequently dismissed."

It said no client money had been lost and the trade did not go ahead.

Businesses

Submission + - FIX Protocol trading standard out next month (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: A new high-speed FIX Protocol trading standard for financial markets is expected to be released next month after being in development for much of last year, according to reports.

The new FIX standard, from the FIX Protocol industry standards body, is said to have been delayed as a result of some exchanges around the world not being able to meet the transaction speeds of the updated FIX standard. The existing FIX standard is already widely used by global markets, alongside the ITCH protocol.

But Financial News reports the updated standard is now ready to be unleashed next month, and it is expected to show "independent like-for-like comparison of trading speeds" among exchanges.

Time delays in transactions, also known as latency, play a critical role in the speed and accuracy of exchanges, so there is believed to have been much industry discussion before the rubber-stamping of the update, as some exchanges aren't as fast as others.

Up to now, there has historically been no independent means of comparing latency.

Henry Young, co-chair of the FIX Inter-Party Latency Working Group, told Financial News: "Some organisations know they're not the best-performing execution venue out there, and they really don't want that put in the spotlight."

Hugh Cumberland, business development manager at networking and telecoms firm Colt, which is a participant in the high-speed trading market, said of the new standard: "It is important that any future rules retain the benefits that HFT (high frequency trading) brings to the market, whilst eradicating and controlling any of the ill-effects or perceived unfairness.

"In order for all market participants to benefit from HFT, a more balanced approach of smarter regulation and increased connectivity to emerging liquidity centres is required."

HFT is an area which financial services regulators around the world are looking to get greater control of, as the reliance on technology to run markets has helped caused recent temporary market crashes in the US and elsewhere.

An international body that is tasked with helping control securities markets recently called for tighter limitations on high-speed trading systems. In a report, the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) demanded greater controls of high-speed trading systems to "mitigate risks", at a time when automatic algorithmic trading activity is increasing.

Businesses

Submission + - Rio Tinto ramps up futuristic IT-driven mines (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: Mining giant Rio Tinto is massively expanding its Mine of the Future programme, in which IT drives automated exploration and production.

The company has announced a $518 million (£327 million) investment in driverless trains controlled by computers, running on its AutoHaul system, at its key Pilbara site in Australia. Pilbara is where it began the automated mining 2008 and where it has the largest IT-driven operation.

The first driverless trains will begin work in 2014, alongside the computer-operated trucks and drills already in use. Rio Tinto runs a 1,500 kilometre network.

"Automating train operations allows Rio Tinto to expand Pilbara production capacity without needing to make a substantial investment in additional trains," the company said. "It will also drive productivity improvements, with greater flexibility in train scheduling and the removal of driver changeover times creating extra capacity in the rail network."

Rio Tinto's Australia chief executive, Sam Walsh, added: "Rio Tinto is leading the way in large-scale use of automation, with plans to deploy 150 driverless trucks and our plans for AutoHaul."

"Automation also helps us address the significant skills shortage facing the industry, providing a valuable opportunity to improve productivity."

The automated trucks and trains will be managed by Rio Tinto's global Operations Centre, based in Perth. The centre integrates and manages the logistics of 14 mines, three ports and two railways.

The move to automation is expected to have a heavy impact on mining jobs, and Rio Tinto vowed to continue discussions with affected staff.

The news comes alongside plans by the company to introduce modernised and shaft and tunnel boring systems, with a degree of automation. It is also developing digital and sensing technologies to detect and separate the mineral from rock waste, in order to improve rates of recovery. Rio Tinto said that the technology "has the capability of being a potential game-changer in the mining industry".

Rio Tinto is also trialling autonomous production drills. The drill rigs position the blast holes, conduct live rock analysis, dictate to the explosives delivery vehicle the correct charge for each hole and provide data supporting three dimensional mapping systems to provide detailed imaging of each deposit.

Last year, Rio Tinto chief executive Tom Albanese said the projects were vital to the company's growth as it faces a tough mining environment with inflating costs, and as it looks to longer term opportunities. Also, he said the programme was critical in meeting a surge in commodity demands.

Businesses

Submission + - Goldman Sachs IT analyst in police investigation (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: Henry King, a high profile IT analyst at Goldman Sachs, is reportedly under investigation for leaking insider trading information.

US authorities, thought to include the FBI, are said to be investigating allegations that King passed on to hedge funds a raft of insider information pertaining to technology companies.

King, who was a senior technology analyst at the bank in Hong Kong, is reported to have advised Goldman Sachs clients on shares in IT firms including Apple, HP and Lenovo. The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, said King typically provided details on the companies' component supply chains and manufacturing activities in Asia as a measurement of demand levels in the US.

It is not the first time that Goldman Sachs has been drawn into allegations of a senior employee being involved in insider trading. Last year, US prosecutors charged former Goldman Sachs director and former McKinsey partner Rajat Gupta with leaking details of boardroom discussions to jailed hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam. Gupta awaits trial.

Goldman Sachs had not commented at the time of writing.

The insider trading probe by US authorities, investigating a range of hedge funds and other companies, is expanding quickly.

FBI assistant director Janice Fedarcyk said earlier this month: "The FBI has arrested more than 60 people in 'Operation Perfect Hedge' [the hedge fund insider trading probe] to date, and this initiative is far from over.

"If you are engaged in insider trading, what distinguishes you from the dozens who have been charged is not that you haven't been caught; it's that you haven't been caught yet."

Goldman Sachs had retained a close relationship with Galleon over the years, the WSJ reported, even though it has said any alleged wrongful actions by former employees would be strictly against company policy. Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein even testified in the Rajaratnam trial.

King is reported as regularly having spoken to Rajaratnam's Galleon fund, as well as to Level Global, another hedge fund drawn into the insider trading fund.

Businesses

Submission + - CSC slashes staff as top project fails (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: Embattled IT services firm CSC has confirmed it will cut up to 500 staff, a week after it booked a £943 million charge on its failed NHS IT programme.

CSC, which is facing up to cancelled projects, investor lawsuits and an aggressive fraud investigation, said the NHS-related staff cuts represented nearly a third of its entire UK healthcare employee count.

Last year, the government officially cancelled the £12.7 billion NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT), aimed at improving healthcare through patient administration systems and electronic health records.

The government had sought to rescope some of the work so that the lead suppliers on the programme would continue to supply and maintain systems in some trusts. But it has so far refused to sign a memorandum of understanding for CSC's future work.

Several high profile reviews heavily criticised CSC's work under its £3 billion contract in the NHS – including one report by the powerful Public Accounts Committee, which said the supplier's work had been so poor that the entire government needed to reconsider whether to give CSC any more work.

CSC said in a statement today that "regrettably" it had "started a formal 90-day consultation process" with staff, "which could reduce the number of people working on our NHS account by up to a maximum of 500 people". It vowed to minimise compulsory cuts, by redeploying some staff and offering others a voluntary redundancy package.

It described the cuts as "necessary mainly because we have now substantially completed many key development activities with NHS". The company's UK healthcare president, Sheri Thureen, told the Public Accounts Committee last year that the Lorenzo patient administration system had finally been developed enough for a faster national rollout. CSC had only deployed Lorenzo to three trusts in nine years.

CSC has been aggressively expanding its private and non-NPfIT healthcare business globally, as the NHS project encountered severe problems. It said it "remains fully committed" to the healthcare business.

Meanwhile, it is being sued by a large Canadian pension fund, which is a major shareholder. The fund alleges that the company painted an inaccurate and unfairly positive picture of its prospects on the NHS programme.

The company is experiencing severe problems on other fronts, including an accounting scandal and deepening financial problems in the Nordics and Australia.

Fraud allegations, levied by US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission, claim CSC conducted DKK 500 million (£59 million) worth of stock manipulation through incorrect financial reporting.

CSC has maintained former employees were to blame for the problems, and in its attempts to solve the issues it has replaced many staff and vowed to tighten controls.

This month, it emerged that CSC had lost a large project in Demark mired by cost overruns and angry political arguments. The Danish national police dropped the project, known as Polsag, in which the cost had ballooned from the DKK153 million (£17 million) budgeted to DKK425 million (£48 million). CSC has not commented.

Several of its Danish projects are understood to have been impacted heavily by strikes among the company's workforce, over a pay dispute. One of its largest projects in Denmark, with the country's Tax and Customs Administration, is also encountering problems. A senior executive of that administration has accused the company of wilfully obscuring the truth about the project's progress.

It recently appointed former Misys boss Mike Lawrie as its new chief executive. Lawrie is known for his abilities to turn around companies.

Security

Submission + - NASDAQ targeted by hackers (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: Hackers have hit the websites of the NASDAQ and BATS stock exchanges.

NASDAQ and BATS saw their sites disrupted during the day on Monday and Tuesday respectively. The sites host company news and share price data, as well as vital information on live service status on the exchanges.

It is understood, however, that while the websites were affected, the stock exchanges continued to trade as normal with no change to trading.

A spokesperson at BATS said the exchange's site had been hit with "an external Distributed Denial Of Service (DDoS) incident".

"Our trading systems were not affected and there were no exchange customer disruptions associated with the incident," she added. "We worked with our internet service provider and swiftly returned our website to a normal operating state. Our trading systems continue to operate normally today."

BATS said it would continue to be "vigilant in protecting our systems from future threats".

NASDAQ told the Wall Street Journal that on Tuesday it experienced "intermittent service disruptions on our corporate websites".

It is not known who initiated the attacks.

In 2010, NASDAQ's Directors Desk online scheduling application was compromised by hackers. An FBI investigation found that the stock exchange's ageing software and out of date security patches played a key part in the problems.

Last month, in separate incidents, the Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi stock exchanges were targeted by hackers, slowing trading.

Businesses

Submission + - BBC server outage hits production (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: The BBC has revealed it had a major server outage that lasted for over two days last month, affecting television programme post-production in its new MediaCity premises in Salford.

The problems occurred on Friday 20 January, and were not solved until the Monday morning, according to Broadcast magazine.

The BBC has not yet responded to enquiries on what caused the issue. The outage reportedly affected the Harmonic MediaGrid and Film Partners MXF Server systems, used by the BBC in post production.

MediaGrid is a clustered storage and grid computing platform, and MXF Server is a server package for popular editing systems. Both are technology specifically created for the media industry.

Film Partners declined to comment on whether its product played any part in the issue, and Harmonic had not responded to a query at the time of writing.

Mark Harrison, BBC North controller of production, told Broadcast magazine that it was a "major crash".

"The problem was diagnosed and the system was up and running by the following Monday morning, but it was not running as smoothly as it should have been, so we took everybody off the shared storage to investigate further."

While he insisted any disruption did not hit production to a "significant degree", he said some producers had moved computer-based work and storage to other facilities.

Businesses

Submission + - ING banks on in-memory analytics (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: ING is expanding its use of in-memory business intelligence analytics, using a real-time system from supplier Quartet FS.

The Dutch Bank is rolling out the ActivePivot system to its credit card department for collateral management and credit value adjustment.

ING already uses ActivePivot for managing market risk and profit & loss validation, but the bank said that the expanded rollout marks the first time that it has used in-memory analytics for operational challenges.

ActivePivot will be used to replace multiple risk applications, saving money and improving flexibility, ING said.

Marnix van Stiphout, ING managing director, said: "We implemented ActivePivot in order to manage our market risk in a proactive, actionable and analytical way. However, we have recognised the solution's powerful potential in helping us solve a number of other operational issues across the business at a much lower cost than the industry's traditional approach.

"As a result, we have set up a Centre of Excellence which is responsible for implementing ActivePivot in other parts of the bank."

Businesses

Submission + - CSC left reeling from $1.5bn failed health project (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: CSC, which is facing cancelled projects, investor lawsuits and an aggressive fraud investigation, has announced a near billion pound write down on its disastrous NHS IT project.

The company, facing problems on numerous fronts, saw its third quarter results knocked into the red, with a $1.39 billion (£874 million) group loss – following a £943 million charge on the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

CSC has suffered the writedown following the government's decision to terminate the project, which is the world's largest civilian IT scheme. The company has invested hundreds of millions of pounds into the work, but has only delivered patient systems to three major trusts in nine years.

The powerful Public Accounts Committee said last year that CSC's work on the project was so poor that the government needed to reconsider whether to give the company any more work.

Without the writedown, CSC said it would have made a profit on steady revenue in the most recent quarter. Revenue for the third quarter totalled $3.76 billion, down 5.8 percent year-on-year.

Today, the company announced the appointment of Mike Lawrie, of UK software giant Misys, as its new chief executive. Mike Laphen, who is retiring, announced his departure in a week that the company revealed an ongoing fraud investigation by US regulators. CSC gave no reason for the departure other than retirement.

CSC is facing an accounting scandal and deepening financial problems in the Nordics and Australia. Fraud allegations, levied by US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission, claim CSC committed DKK 500 million (£59 million) worth of stock manipulation through incorrect financial reporting.

CSC has maintained former employees were to blame for the problems, and in its attempts to solve the issues it has replaced many staff and vowed to tighten controls.
Last week, it emerged that CSC had lost a large project in Demark mired by cost overruns and angry political arguments. The Danish national police dropped the project, known as Polsag, in which the cost had ballooned from the $153 million budgeted to $425 million. CSC has not commented.

Several of its projects are understood to have been impacted heavily by strikes among the company's workforce, over a pay dispute. One of its largest projects in Denmark, with the country's Tax and Customs Administration, is also encountering problems. A senior executive of that administration has accused the company of wilfully obscuring the truth about the project's progress.

CSC is also being sued by a large pension fund, which is a major shareholder. The fund alleges that the company painted an inaccurate and unfairly positive picture of its prospects on the NHS programme.

Laphen today again expressed confidence in what work may remain for CSC in the NHS: "Notwithstanding the NHS charge, discussions continue toward defining a programme scope and a market potential that builds upon our accomplishments to date."

Businesses

Submission + - JP Morgan in massive lawsuit over 'fraudulent' IT (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are being sued by the US Attorney General over an allegedly restrictive and inaccurate database that may have resulted in unfair foreclosures for many home buyers.

The banks, which are some of the largest in America, are accused of creating and controlling access to a database of mortgage holders in ways that enabled them to deceive courts and fraudulently foreclose homes for people struggling to pay their mortgage. At the same time, they avoided $2 billion in processing fees. They have not yet commented on the claims.

The electronic mortgage registry, known as MERS, was created in 1995 to simplify the recording of mortgage sales and to allow banks to more easily sell on the loans. The system was created in 1995, and contains 70 million loans, including those written by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Nearly half of the loans in the system are currently active.

But as well as being used fraudulently, the database was also "plagued with inaccuracies and errors", according to the complaint.

US Attorney General Eric Schneidermann said that employees and agents of the bank used the system to "repeatedly" submit court documents on mortgage holders, "containing false and misleading information that made it appear that the foreclosing party had the authority to bring a case when in fact it may not have [had]".

A large number of the 13,000 foreclosure filings in court, based on the system's data, were invalid because they misrepresented the claimants as having the authority to foreclose, said the lawsuit. The system even automatically generated erroneous documents that only served to mislead and confuse homeowners and the courts, it said.

Merscorp, the company created to run the system, is also named alongside the three banks in the lawsuit, as well as the bank's loan subsidiaries BAC Home Loans Servicing, Chase Home Finance, EMC Mortgage Corporation, and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage.

The MERS system stored information in a private database, which "effectively eliminated homeowners' and the public's ability to track property transfers through the traditional public records system," according to the Attorney General's office.

"The banks created the MERS system as an end-run around the property recording system, to facilitate the rapid securitisation and sale of mortgages," said Schneiderman.

"Once the mortgages went sour, these same banks brought foreclosure proceedings en masse based on deceptive and fraudulent court submissions, seeking to take homes away from people with little regard for basic legal requirements or the rule of law."

The lawsuit is intended to show that there is "one set of rules for all, no matter how big or powerful the institution may be," he said.

It calls for damages, if won, to be calculated according to all the fees and profits allegedly fraudulently collected, as well as for a $5,000 payment to the state for each instance of law breaking. The lawsuit also asks the judge for a court order to resolve any incorrect foreclosures as a result of MERS.

Meanwhile, the banks are looking to sign a $25 billion nationwide agreement with the US government, which could release them from further liability over unfair foreclosures. It remains unclear to what extent that agreement could be blocked by the lawsuit.

Businesses

Submission + - Chief at head of CSC fraud crisis awarded new job (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: Carsten Lind, the chief executive at the Danish division of CSC during a period of major crisis, is moving to take a senior role at rival outsourcer Fujitsu.

Lind announced his resignation from CSC in October, at a time US regulators detailed a fraud investigation into accountancy problems at the local division. In the same week, CSC global chief executive Mike Laphen announced his retirement.

In the case of Lind, no official reason was given for his sudden departure from CSC, which came after only 18 months in the role. He had been appointed to focus closely on improving the business in the region. Laphen's departure was described as a retirement, and made no references to the company's troubles.

Lind, who has also previously served as chief information officer at the Danish Post Office and senior VP of technology at Deustche Telekom, will become chief operating officer at Fujitsu Nordics. In the role, he will be based in Stockholm and will also be chief executive of the Sweden business, which employs 1,200 people. Fujitsu Sweden CEO Peter Kopelman is leaving the company.

The president of Fujitsu Norway will also report directly to Lind.

Fujitsu's Nordic chief executive Bengt Engstrom, who will closely manage the Denmark and Finland operations, said Lind's COO role was being introduced in order to better "coordinate" the Nordic businesses and their delivery centres. He added that he expected "improvements both externally and internally" as a result of the change.

Fujitsu has not provided comment on Lind's appointment following the troubles at CSC Denmark.

Meanwhile, CSC's Nordic operations are now being led by John Walsh, based in Denmark where the company employs over 2,000 staff. Walsh, a president at CSC, was drafted in to the region in December, as news spread of the serious challenges it faced.

Last week, it emerged that CSC had lost a large project mired by cost overruns and angry political arguments. The Danish national police dropped the project, known as Polsag, in which the cost had ballooned from the $153 million budgeted to $425 million. CSC has not commented.

Several of its projects are understood to have been impacted heavily by strikes among the company's workforce, over a pay dispute. One of its largest projects in Denmark, with the country's Tax and Customs Administration, is also encountering problems. A senior executive of that administration has accused the company of wilfully obscuring the truth about the project's progress.

CSC is facing an accounting scandal and deepening financial problems in the region. Fraud allegations, levied by US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission, claim CSC committed DKK 500 million (£59 million) worth of global stock manipulation through incorrect financial reporting.

CSC has maintained former employees were to blame for the Danish problems, and in its attempts to solve the issues it has replaced over half of its senior finance staff there and vowed to tighten controls.

The fraud allegations have also spread to Australia, where CSC has disclosed it found "intentional misconduct" around accounting.

In November, CSC reported a £1.77 billion quarterly loss. Group chief executive Mike Laphen announced his resignation within the next year, though he did not disclose any reason for the timing.

In the UK, the company has announced it is facing a potential £960 million writedown on its NHS contract. CSC invested heavily in the programme, yet only delivered patient administration systems to a handful of trusts. The programme has now been decentralised and CSC is no longer expected to deliver the systems to a significant number of the trusts originally contracted.

CSC is also being sued by a large pension fund, which is a major shareholder. The fund alleges that the company painted an inaccurate and unfairly positive picture of its prospects on the NHS programme.

Network

Submission + - Boffins embed electronic components into optical fibres (techworld.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at the Universities of Southampton and Penn State have found a way to embed electronic components into optical fibres, in a breakthrough that could lead to the creation of super high-speed telecommunications networks.

Rather than trying to merge flat chips with round optical fibres, the team of scientists used high-pressure chemistry techniques to deposit semiconducting materials layer by layer directly into tiny holes in optical fibres. This bypasses the need to integrate fibre-optics onto a chip, and means that the data signal never has to leave the fibre.

Businesses

Submission + - News Corp hands over millions of emails to police (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has reportedly handed over to UK police a data file containing hundreds of millions of News International emails, as part of ongoing phone and email hacking investigations.

The data file handed to police is known as "Data Pool 3", according to the Guardian newspaper, and is so large that police have decided they cannot effectively read every email. Instead, investigators are searching for specific keywords around hacking.

Last week, Rupert Murdoch travelled to the UK for meetings at News International, and visited its IT department. The reasons for the meetings have not been disclosed.

Access to News International's email archive has been a major issue during the hacking scandal. During 2009 and 2010, internal orders were issued at News International, for a pre-arranged email deletion plan to be executed, according to the Guardian — though it is not clear who made the orders. The instructions were reiterated several times over the following months but were not initially adhered to. This period also saw a renewed police investigation into the hacking scandal as victims, including Sienna Miller, made damages claims against the publisher.

The initial requests for email deletion may have been part of normal data management procedure, the newspaper reported. But last week, a High Court judge said News International had wilfully deleted emails that could have shown its journalists' participation in phone and computer hacking. As the company paid large settlement sums to a number of individuals over alleged hacking, the judge ordered a forensic search of the company's computers.

News International, which is facing growing accusations that several of its titles might be involved in hacking, has not commented. Two current and two former journalists on The Sun were arrested on Saturday, but have not been charged.

Legal experts told Computerworld UK that companies are within their legal right to delete emails as a way of controlling data volumes. However, they said, such deletion during a time of police investigations and court cases would be viewed highly unfavourably by a judge and could be a serious legal breach.

News International previously told the government's culture committee in carefully worded language that "technological corruptions" of its database had "resulted in some data being lost", and allegedly told victims' lawyers that it ditched some computers as part of an office move in 2010. It has also claimed, then later retracted the statement, that a raft of emails were lost en route to Mumbai.

Facing heightened legal pressure, the Guardian reported, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of parent group News Corp., has ordered all of the emails in Data Pool 3 to be handed over to authorities. It is understood that News International is also rapidly searching the database itself, in order to assess the information it contains. It has consistently said it is co-operating with the police.

Businesses

Submission + - Automobile control software chaos revealed in govt (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: Automated software control systems are proliferating in cars, but vehicle safety authorities do not have anywhere near enough expertise to measure or regulate their usage.

That is according to the stark warnings of a US government-commissioned report, which found that it was "unrealistic" for the country's vehicle safety agency to be able to maintain the skills to keep up with rapid technology change.

The news comes after Toyota discovered sudden acceleration problems in its cars in 2009, and after Jaguar found a severe control software risk in its cars last year.

In its report, the US National Research Council said the government had been "justified" in closing its investigation into the Toyota problems, after reaching the conclusion that the car's pedals were becoming stuck. But it said that although the government concluded that computer systems were not a plausible cause, persistent questions around IT remained.

It described as "troubling" the fact that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) still "could not convincingly address public concerns about the safety of automotive electronics".

Louis Lanzerotti, distinguished research professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and chair of the National Research Council, said it would be difficult for NHTSA to keep pace with the technology. But he called for it to develop much better knowledge by engaging with industry.

"A standing advisory committee is one way NHTSA can interact with industry and with technical experts in electronics to keep abreast of these technologies and oversee their safety," he said. "Neither the automotive industry, NHTSA, nor motorists can afford a recurrence of something like the [Toyota] unintended acceleration controversy."

The National Research Council said the advisory committee needed a panel of individuals with backgrounds central to the design, development, and safety assurance of car electronics systems – including experts in software and systems engineering, in human factors, and in electronics hardware. It would be consulted on technical matters for regulatory reviews, defect investigation processes and research assessments.

It was vital that NHTSA becomes more familiar "with how manufacturers design safety and security into electronics systems, identify and investigate system faults that may leave no physical trace, and respond convincingly when concerns arise about system safety", said the report.

The NHTSA needed to become "proactive" to technology development, it said, including assessing how drivers interact with electronics systems. It added: "In the future, the possibility of electronics leading to increasingly autonomous vehicles presents a new set of safety challenges and will demand even more agency planning and foresight".

The National Research Council said it supported an NHTSA initiative to install event data recorders in cars to inform safety investigations, saying the devices must become "commonplace in all new vehicles".

Businesses

Submission + - Hedge fund settles huge Dell fraud case (computerworlduk.com)

DMandPenfold writes: Diamondback Capital Management, a large US hedge fund managing billions of dollars of assets, has settled a groundbreaking FBI case around the alleged $62 million insider trading of Dell and Nvidia stock.

The hedge fund will immediately pay $9 million to authorities as part of the agreement, which was reached in a New York court, and will claim serious wrongful conduct by two senior former employees.

The alleged criminal operation, involving trades of Dell and Nvidia shares based on private company information, is being described by authorities as one of the largest ever insider trading rings, and involves former employees at several hedge funds, as well as at Dell.

Todd Newman, a senior manager at Diamondback, was arrested in Boston last week. Jesse Tortura, a former analyst at the company, was also implicated in the case by prosecutors. The two continue to face securities fraud charges.

Diamondback itself will no longer face prosecution. The company has agreed to sign an official statement detailing the "wrongful conduct" of two of its employees.

Other individuals facing charges include Anthony Chiasson, a co-founder at Level Global investors, Jon Horvath, an employee at Sigma Capital Management, and Danny Kuo of Whittier Trust. All three firms are large hedge funds.

Level Global allegedly made $57 million from a tip ahead of Dell's results, according to the FBI, which would be the largest single profit in history from insider information. None of the companies facing questions has commented.

Two former Dell employees — an unnamed employee in the company's investor relations department from 2007 to 2009, as well as Sandeep Goyal, who worked at its US headquarters between 2006 and 2007 — were also said to be part of the alleged scam.

Some 56 traders and associates have been convicted in the "Operation Perfect Hedge" investigation, of which this case is the largest known part. The investigation also included the high profile insider trading conviction of Galleon hedge fund co-founder Raj Rajaratnam – after he traded extensively in AMD, IBM, Intel and 3Com stock.

George Canellos, director of the SEC's New York office, said the authority believes the settlement by Diamondback "appropriately sanctions the misconduct" while demonstrating the company's assistance in the police investigation.

Diamondback, which was raided over a year ago by the FBI as part of the investigation, has not provided further comment. The other hedge funds continue to face questions.

Dell said in a statement that it "has cooperated with government authorities". It added: "All Dell employees are required annually to complete training on the company's Code of Conduct, which includes a section on insider trading. Violations of these policies are treated seriously, and violations result in disciplinary action up to and including termination."

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