NEWS-06
captured major headlines this year.>
in the U.S. alone. At least eight people have been killed worldwide. Nearly
a hundred injured from the air bags spraying shrapnel.>
ANNE-MARIE GREEN: Well, between the interest rate hike and auto recalls, business news captured major headlines this year. Jill Wagner looks back at the top financial stories of 2015.
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JILL WAGNER: Faulty Takata air bags caused the recall of twenty million vehicles in the U.S. alone. At least eight people have been killed worldwide. Nearly a hundred injured from the air bags spraying shrapnel.
HIROSHI SHIMIZU: It`s terrifying. I thought I was going to bleed out.
JILL WAGNER: Volkswagen admitted to using special software in eleven million vehicles to cheat on emissions tests. The CEO apologized that the scandal led to a steep drop in Volkswagen sales.
HERBERT DIESS (Volkswagen CEO): We will make sure that something like this never happens again.
JILL WAGNER: Cyberattacks shook up the corporate world. Hackers broke into Anthem Health insurer, which runs Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. As many as eighty million customer records were exposed. Three suspects were charged in a giant hacking scheme that targeted at least a dozen corporations.
PREET BHARARA (U.S. Attorney Southern District of New York): The data breaches at these firms were breathtaking in scope and in size.
JILL WAGNER: The New York Stock Exchange said it was not a cyberattack that halted trading over the summer. A technical glitch shut down the exchange for nearly four hours. The shutdown was followed by a meltdown. The stock market had some of its sharpest declines in history when instability in foreign economies spooked Wall Street.
BEN WILLIS: I`ve never seen the Dow down a thousand points in one move.
JILL WAGNER: By the end of the year, the Dow was nearly where it started. Unemployment edged down to five percent. And the more robust job market led the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. Oil prices plunged, and that gave consumers a break at the pump, where gas prices slipped to around two dollars a gallon. Apple launched its smartwatch.
TIM COOK: The most advanced timepiece ever created.
JILL WAGNER: In a pair of megamergers, drug makers Pfizer and Allergan announced plans to join forces and Dow Chemical agreed to merge with Dupont, creating the second biggest chemical company in the world. Chipotle`s stock took a tumble. The restaurant chain scrambled to contain an E. coli outbreak and then a bout of Norovirus that sickened over a hundred students in Boston. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan welcomed a baby girl and they promised to donate the bulk of their forty-five-billion-dollar fortune to charity. A holiday gift to remember.
Jill Wagner, CBS News, New York.
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ANNE-MARIE GREEN: Well, coming up after your local news on CBS THIS MORNING, an effort by food companies to swap out artificial ingredients in their food. We`ll have the details. Plus Doctor David Agus has his health predictions for 2016. And a look at how the holiday shopping season is shaping up as we buy our last-minute presents.
That`s the CBS MORNING NEWS for this Thursday. Thanks for watching. I`m Anne-Marie Green. Have a great day.
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