FORT WORTH, TEXAS (AP) – Boeing representatives and relatives of some of the passengers killed in two crashes of Boeing 737 Max jets will meet face-to-face in a Texas courtroom, where the aerospace giant will be arraigned on a criminal charge that it thought it had settled two years ago.

In a brief filed on Wednesday, lawyers for the families accused Boeing of committing “the deadliest corporate crime in United States (US) history”.

The family members were never consulted before Boeing cut a deal with the US Justice Department to avoid prosecution on a felony charge of fraud.

Up to a dozen or so people from several countries are expected to testify about how the loss of loved ones has affected them.

There will be two main phases to the arraignment: Boeing will enter a plea, and then relatives of the passengers will ask the court to impose conditions on Boeing much as it would on any criminal defendant.

The families said in a filing on Wednesday those conditions should include a court-picked monitor to evaluate whether Boeing is creating a culture of safety and ethics – as it promised the government – and that its steps to do so be made public.

Boeing has faced civil lawsuits, congressional investigations and massive damage to its business since the crashes in 2018 and 2019, which killed a combined total of 346 people.

Boeing and its top officials have avoided criminal prosecution, however, because of the settlement reached between the company and the government in January 2021.

Boeing was charged with a single count of defrauding the US to get regulators to approve the Max jet.

But the outgoing Trump administration’s Justice Department agreed to defer prosecution and drop the charge if Boeing paid USD2.5 billion – mostly to airlines, but including a USD243.6 million fine – and commit no other crimes for three years.

US District Judge Reed O’Connor ordered Boeing to be arraigned after finding that the Justice Department violated a victims-rights law by not telling the families about secret negotiations with Boeing. He has not ruled on a separate issue of whether Boeing should lose its immunity from prosecution.

FRANKFURT, GERMANY (AFP) – German software giant SAP yesterday said it planned to cut some 3,000 jobs this year, joining a wave of layoffs in the global tech sector.

The Walldorf-based group, which offers both traditional software and cloud-based computing services, said it planned to carry out a “targetted restructuring programme” to “strengthen its core business” and improve efficiency.

“The programme is expected to affect approximately 2.5 per cent of SAP’s employees,” it said in an earnings report unveiling full-year results for 2022.

SAP has a workforce of around 120,000 employees worldwide, meaning it plans to shed some 3,000 jobs. The move follows similar cuts announced by tech giants as the once-unassailable sector girds for an economic downturn.

SAP said its jobs cull would cost the company between EUR250 million and EUR300 million, mainly in the first quarter of 2023. The restructuring is expected to lead to annual savings of EUR300-350 million from 2024, “which will help to fuel investments into strategic growth areas”, SAP said.

SAP also said it would explore a sale of its Qualtrics subsidiary, which specialises in online market research software.

A sale would further allow SAP to focus more on its core cloud business, it said. For the whole of 2022, SAP announced revenues of EUR30.9 billion, up 11 per cent on a year earlier.

Operating profits came in at just over EUR8 billion, down two per cent compared with 2021.

For 2023, SAP expects operating profits to increase by 10 to 13 per cent.

NEW YORK (AP) – Goldman Sachs no longer wants to be the bank for everyone.

The storied investment bank spent eight years attempting to expand its business beyond corporations and the wealthy. But in recent months, Goldman has signalled a partial retreat from those efforts by scrapping plans for a checking account broadly available to the public and mothballing its personal loan business. A popular savings account and a credit card business survive for now.

Last week, the bank disclosed that it had accumulated USD3 billion in losses in its consumer banking franchise since 2020, mostly money set aside to cover potential loan losses in its consumer lending businesses.

Bank regulators are reportedly looking into whether the consumer business had proper safeguards in place as it grew larger.

The retreat in consumer banking comes as Goldman tries to refocus on its roots: advising corporations on deals, investing, and trading, and servicing the well-to-do. The firm’s revenue from investment banking, trading and wealth management made up two thirds of total revenue last year.

“I think it became clear to us early in 2022 that we were doing too much, it was affecting our execution,” said Goldman Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) David Solomon, in a call with analysts when the bank reported its results earlier this month.

Goldman’s push into consumer banking was one of the biggest changes in the firm’s 154-year history. The investment bank had to legally convert itself into a bank holding company in 2008 during the financial crisis to get access to the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) emergency funding operations. That led to jokes within the industry that the Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs was going to issue something as commonplace as an ATM card.

The jokes became a reality when Goldman bought the assets of GE Capital and launched its online only savings account providing an above market interest rate. The savings account became an unexpected hit for Goldman, with waiting lists forming after its initial launch both in the United States (US) and later in the United Kingdom (UK).

The online savings account is not going away, and is considered an asset by the firm, Solomon told investors. The firm now holds more than USD100 billion in retail deposits, which is a cheap form of capital for the investment bank that historically hasn’t had access to such forms of financing.

The personal loan business, launched with great fanfare in 2016 with a broad advertising campaign under the brand Marcus, has been a trouble spot for the bank. Goldman Sachs executives acknowledged at the time of the launch that the Marcus brand was created to give Goldman – with its veneer of being a powerbroker between Washington and Wall Street – a much more friendly and reachable edge.

The unsecured personal loans, largely used by customers to consolidate credit card debt, became a burden during the coronavirus pandemic when millions of Americans could no longer pay their bills. The bank set aside billions of dollars to cover potentially bad loans and, unlike other big banks that were able to release those reserves in 2021 and 2022, Goldman largely had to keep adding to its reserves.

New accounting standards that have required banks to model potential loan losses more aggressively also contributed to the decision to wind down the personal loan business.

The large losses have caught the attention of bank regulators, which have also been looking into Goldman’s personal lending operations.

The Wall Street Journal reported last Friday that the Fed is investigating whether the firm had adequate safeguards around its personal loan business as it ramped up its lending.

Investors have long questioned the need for Goldman to go into consumer lending.

The bank kept the consumer banking operation under the umbrella of its wealth management division in its quarterly results, leading to criticism that Goldman was hiding Marcus’ losses from its investors.