LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California official defending the state’s landmark law that mandates women be placed on corporate boards testified Thursday that it was essentially toothless and there are no plans to penalize companies for not complying. Under the 2018 law, publicly held corporations based in California have to appoint up to three women to their boards of directors by January and could face hefty fines for not doing so or for failing to file the required paperwork...

SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP) — A trust representing more than 80,000 victims of deadly wildfires ignited by Pacific Gas and Electric's rickety electrical grid is suing nearly two dozen of the utility's former executives and board members for alleged dereliction of their duty to ensure the equipment wouldn't kill people...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Valley Authority has hired a new independent consultant to take a fresh look into its executive compensation after President Donald Trump earlier this month blasted the CEO as being “ridiculously overpaid," the federal utility's board chairman said Thursday...

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — An accounting scandal at one of Germany’s fastest-growing blue-chip companies has raised doubts about the national financial watchdog and, coming on top of other high-profile cases of fraud, led to questions about the country’s ability to oversee its corporate titans. Some 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) vanished from payment systems provider Wirecard, until recently heralded as Germany’s emerging giant of the financial tech sector...

NEW YORK (AP) — Neiman Marcus has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the first department store chain to do so and the second major retailer to be toppled by the coronavirus pandemic. The move by the 112-year-old storied luxury department store chain was announced Thursday and follows the bankruptcy filing by J.Crew on Monday. Experts believe there will be more to come even as there are moves to reopen businesses in parts of the country like Texas and Florida...

The House of Mouse is struggling. Its second quarter profit dropped as the company took a $1.4 billion hit due to the coronavirus pandemic. For the January to March quarter, Disney's net income dropped 93 percent to 26 cents per share. Excluding one-time items, net income totaled 60 cents per share...

NEW YORK (AP) — AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is stepping down after leading the telecommunications giant for 13 years. The Dallas company named John Stankey as chief executive effective July 1...

Pacific Gas & Electric CEO Bill Johnson will step down from the job just 14 months after the nation's largest utility hired him to rescue it from a crippling financial mess caused by a long history of negligence and chance a corporate culture that had emphasized profits over safety...

EBay is selling StubHub to ticket seller viagogo for $4.05 billion in cash. The transaction is part of a review that eBay undertook earlier this year following pressure from an activist investor. The San Jose, California-based company then said it was also reviewing options for its classified ads business. EBay Inc. bought StubHub in 2007 for $310 million. Both StubHub and the classifieds business each brought in less than 10% of eBay’s total revenue last year...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has accused his state's largest utility company of mismanaging funds he said it should have used to upgrade an aging electrical grid prone to deadly wildfires. But over the past two decades, Newsom, a Democrat, and his wife have accepted more than $700,000 from the Pacific Gas & Electric Co., its foundation and its employees ...

CBS acting Chief Executive Officer Joe Ianniello is in line for a hefty haul when Viacom completes its proposed merger with the broadcast network. While he won't get to lead the combined entity, he'll collect $100 million severance and remain chief of CBS with a new contract entitling him to tens of millions of dollars more. The arrangement illustrates the extent of CBS's effort to persuade Ianniello, a 22-year company veteran, to support the tie-up without having a shot at the top job...

Marathon Petroleum Corp. buckled under pressure from shareholders and announced the spinoff of its retail fuel-station business and the departure of its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, just five weeks after activist investor Elliott Management Corp. went public with demands for a radical overhaul of the company. Marathon confirmed the plan Thursday, along with a review of its pipeline business...

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma paid its CEO $9 million and its board chairman nearly $4 million in the 12 months before the company's bankruptcy filing last month, according to recently filed financial documents. Five other board members overseeing the private company were paid a combined $3.7 million over that span. Purdue, a privately held company that usually does not disclose detailed financial information, had to make the information public as a part of its bankruptcy proceedings...

New York's $1.6 billion securities-fraud lawsuit against Exxon Mobil is scheduled to begin a second week of trial Monday, after a series of witnesses didn't provide any concrete evidence that the oil giant knowingly misled shareholders about its climate change accounting. Testimony by investors and employees did show a potential lack of clarity as to the difference between two measures of climate costs used by the energy giant...

Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. has built a position in Hilton Grand Vacations Inc. and has been advocating for a sale prior to the company putting itself on the block, according to people familiar with the matter. The New York-based hedge fund run by billionaire Paul Singer bought a stake of less than 5% in the time-share operator in July, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn't public...

Corporate - governance experts said the SEC could push for starker penalties for Musk, Tesla or its directors - including an outright ban blocking him ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The partial government shutdown is slowing plans by some companies to issue stock to the public and potentially cutting off a key source of capital for the financial markets. The shutdown, now in its fourth week, has all but darkened the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government agency that oversees the markets. Most of the SEC's 4,400-person staff is furloughed, including lawyers and other staffers who must approve corporate paperwork for initial public offerings...

Large companies - those worth $5 billion or more - appointed nearly three times as many women than men to their boards of directors during the second and third quarters last year, showing just how eager they are to diversify their governance teams and comply with mounting pressure for equality...

NEW YORK (AP) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk dismissed the idea that the company's new chairwoman can exert control over his behavior. Robyn Denholm, an Australian telecommunications executive, was appointed chairwoman of Tesla's board last month, replacing Musk as part of as part of a securities fraud settlement with U.S. government regulators. But Musk said "it's not realistic" to expect Denholm to watch over his actions because he remains the electric car company's largest shareholder...

NEW YORK (AP) — California's new law requiring companies to include women on their boards of directors may not survive widely expected legal challenges but it has already spotlighted the entrenched practices and barriers that have helped keep women out of boardrooms...

Google parent Alphabet Inc. has rejected several shareholder proposals aimed at linked executive pay to diversity goals, being more open about its lobbying expenses, narrowing the gender pay gap, and weakening the grip founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have on company voting stock...

In February, the Fed board voted unanimously to order Wells Fargo to limit its growth and improve its corporate governance in response to the bank's unauthorized accounts scandal and other problems. “Given the breadth of the wrongdoing at Wells Fargo and the enormous number of consumers ...

Netflix has named former Obama administration official Susan Rice to its board of directors , the streaming service announced Wednesday. “We are delighted to welcome Ambassador Rice to the Netflix board,” said Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings. “For decades, she has tackled difficult, ...

The lawsuit asks for financial restitution to the company as well as a court order requiring Facebook to improve its corporate governance and internal procedures. The data disclosure allegedly came about when a researcher invited Facebook users to sign up for a psychological survey in 2014, was able ...