Apple’s former lawyer was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for insider trading ahead of six of the iPhone maker’s quarterly earnings this Wednesday

Reports say Gene Levoff exploited his position as corporate secretary, head of corporate law and co-chairman of a committee that reviewed draft copies of Apple’s financial results to trade illegally between 2011 and 2016.

Levoff was sole in charge of Apple’s insider-trading policy and was Apple’s named representative on many of its corporate acquisitions and subsidiaries. Levoff was familiar with the company’s trading policies, routinely sending emails to workers, reminding them not to buy and sell stock amid earnings announcements, the SEC said.

Prosecutors said that before Apple terminated his decade-long employment in September, Levoff made around $604,000 in illegal gains, including realized profit and avoided losses.

Levoff has one count of securities fraud, carrying a maximum 20-year prison term and a $5 million fine.

However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed related civil charges in the case as this was one of the rare instances of a senior lawyer at a major U.S. company being implicated in a crime. According to the filing, Levoff exploited his well-placed position to manage his Apple shares trading privately. He would gain access to the company’s periodic earnings results and draft public filing before release.

Antonia Chion, an associate director of the SEC’s enforcement division, said in a statement, “Levoff’s alleged exploitation of his access to Apple’s financial information was particularly egregious given his responsibility for implementing the company’s insider trading compliance policy.”

Apple said in its statement that they have terminated Levoff after an internal probe.

Authorities also quoted that Levoff belonged to Apple’s general counsel and has long been a corporate officer of most of the major subsidiary of the Cupertino, a California-based company.

According to authorities, Levoff helped Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and his predecessor, Steve Jobs, ensuring the timeliness, accuracy and proper oversight of the company’s disclosures, including financial results.

The SEC mentioned that Levoff had broken Apple’s insider-trading policies on at least three accounts. For instance, in July 2015, he had allegedly learned about Apple’s poor iPhone sales report. At that time, Levoff almost sold his entire Apple holding, which was worth $10 million. After Apple released the quarterly report, its share plunged by over 4 percent. To that end, Levoff avoided a potential loss of approximately $345,000.

Apart from this, prosecutors also claimed Levoff bought and sold more than $14 million of Apple stock, including $10 million in July 2015 alone, after being given draft earnings materials but before the results were made public.

Apple confirmed that Levoff conducted illegal trades during his tenure at their company.

The tech giant clarified that it had initiated an internal investigation against Levoff after receiving a tip from the SEC in 2017. They ended up terminating him in September 2018 after placing him on a two-month leave.

Josh Rosenstock, Apple’s spokesperson, told Bloomberg that, “After being contacted by authorities last summer, we conducted a thorough investigation with the help of outside legal experts, which resulted in termination.”

The US attorney has also filed criminal charges against Levoff which could have him face up to 20 years in jail and a $5 million fine.

Charges against Levoff were levied in New Jersey, where authorities said the servers were located for firms that handled Levoff’s illegal trades.

The cases are the U.S. v. Levoff, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 19-mag-03507; and SEC v. Levoff in the same court, No. 19-05536.

These allegations are a black spot for Apple, which mostly had a clean record over financial reporting issues.

The earnings report of the previous year was released on Thursday evening, and it revealed that Canopy, the leading pot seller, showed a 300% growth in revenue. The company’s shares also rose by 4.4% the same day following the announcement of the earnings report.

Co-Chief Executive Bruce Linton came out saying that the company hoped to continue being the leading pot producer in the world. He also says that they have a clear plan to stay at the top.

He caught up with MarketWatch on the phone the Friday morning and revealed the top three priorities that would help the company to achieve its targets.

According to him, a combination of the right people, good capital expenditures, and appropriate allocation of the company’s supply of cannabis will make the business hit all the necessary heights.

Those three things go together — they have a synchronizing effect,” Linton said.

Canopy has reportedly invested largely in increasing its employee base. The number of employees grew from 700 to 27,00 which is a whopping 285% growth.

“You do what can be done, by a group of people,” Linton said. “We are constantly scanning for new personnel — working against evolving priorities. There is never a week that goes by that we don’t.”

The recent success of the company is due to the legalization of recreational Marijuana in Canada last year.

Revenue for the fiscal third quarter hit as high as 282% compared to the previous year. Chairman and Co-CEO Linton said that the key to succeeding in the market was to make early calculated investments that would help the company to grab the share of the market while the law took effect.

Canopy Growth had claimed a wider loss this year following its heavy investment on research, development, and marketing. However, this did not bother the investors as the company’s stock rose 4% Friday. The shares are up by 80% this year.

Last year, the company managed to lock down a third of its rising recreational cannabis market. The company was confident that the investments and product development campaigns would keep it in that position.

BMO Capital Markets released a note on Friday saying that Canopy’s sales volume in terms of recreational Marijuana showed a market share of 30%.

Mr. Linton was asked if this was the position the company was expecting to hold on to in the coming years. He said that talk in the coming quarters would shift more towards the possibility of converting cannabis into more consumer products.

Meanwhile, there is a visible inclination towards legalization of recreational Marijuana in the United States. More states are legalizing the drug’s use for recreation. Besides, many brokerage firms have shown interest in the companies too.

Reports and speculation about Apple’s video streaming subscription where going around the corners for years now and finally Apple is all set to launch its new TV subscription service. Reports say that Apple is expecting to launch its new service in April or in May.

Apple currently is working in the final development phase and getting its new video streaming services ready for deployment. The new video streaming services include free original content feature basically for device owners and offer subscription service for users to subscribe to other digital services. Subscription TV series are offered by Viacom Inc., CBS and Lions Gate Corp’s Starz along with its original content.

Major video streaming partners like Netflix and HBO are not expected to be the part of it, while the services of Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Prime video is most likely to be damaged, reports according to a few reliable persons.

Apple had planned about the new video services and is spending almost $2 billion in Hollywood to form its video content and singing content with star-like Oprah Winfrey. The new video streaming is to be launched worldwide.

The main goal of the service is to enable customers to sign up for the existing streaming products and allow them to access it on their iOS TV application, just like Amazon’s Prime Video Channels. Apple seeks to simplify the mobile video viewing feature by assembling all video content in a single app rather than allowing the user to install various apps for every service. It is quite an important step to counter its rivals Amazon’s Prime and Netflix Inc.

According to Bloomberg, Apple is expected to launch both of its service namely, new video service and subscription service on March 25 at a service event. Apple Inc. has already invited big Hollywood celebrities like Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, director JJ Abrams and Jennifer Garner for the event.

The service is likely to be distributed across the various Apple App stores and will be available in 100 + countries.

Apple Inc. is careful about the plans and how is it going to distribute the shows is still a secret. The investors have started to focus on the revenue from the paid subscriptions as an alternative means for the increase in iPhone sales. From the holiday season onwards there is a decline in the sale of iPhone’s for the first time in its history during last year.

Some people say that Apple Inc. is negotiating with HBO, WarnerMedia owned by AT&T Inc. to be a part of its new service, although it is not yet been decided and may take a call before the launch of the new service while HBO has not rendered with the same terms that Amazon Inc. has offered it.

Apple Inc. has developed its own service segment which helped them for the plan to launch the television service; the service segment brought $37.1 billion during 2018 fiscal.

The accurate details about the disagreement between Apple Inc. and HBO are not known; however, media companies are worried about the data sharing and revenue split as Apple tries to offer the existing services to the customers in all new way.

Those customers who will subscribe for top video service by using it new streaming services will be applicable for 30 percent cut and Apple is pushing this plan forward. At present, Apple Inc. takes 15 percent cut on revenue from the users who have signed up to HBO Now and Netflix and also other video streaming apps via the App store, people mentioned.

People also say that neither Netflix nor Hulu are part of the Amazon Prime Video Channels and they are even not going to be the part of Apple’s product.

However, CBS, HBO, Starz, Viacom, and Netflix have not responded to the comments.

Apple has worked with various media companies for over the years now, only to access its content. Apple CEO Tim Cook, last month during its earnings conference call has viewed the new service offering.

The customer behavior has changed over time and is currently changing, we believe the change will be significant in the years to come, and there will be a decrease in the use of the cable bundle. We believe that the change will take place at a much faster level during the year, Tim Cook mentioned. We will be stepping into original content world.

We have signed a long partnership deal with Oprah, and as of now, I don’t want to go in-depth about the conversation. Highly motivated people have been hired who are superb confident enough and will be able to talk more on it later.

Apple has decided to play various movies and series on its new service which includes animated movies, reality shows, dramas and comedies which will be collected by Macworld.

European aircraft manufacturing giant Airbus has decided to no longer produce the A380 Superjumbo, according to an announcement made by the company on Thursday. The cruise liner was Airbus’ big bet on its quest to become the king of the skies, but the sales figures have not quite been up to the company’s expectations. The Superjumbo is the world’s biggest airliner, and Airbus wanted it to be a direct competitor against the iconic 747 that is produced by rivals Boeing. However, the plan completely backfired as the airline industry went in a different direction altogether. Airlines are nowadays buying smaller aircraft, and consequently, the demand for large planes like the Superjumbo has nosedived. It is not a surprise that the company decided to cut its losses and stop production altogether.

According to the statement delivered by the company, the last Superjumbo would be rolled out in 2021 and no more after that. However, ending the A380 Superjumbo production also places thousands of jobs at risk and Airbus did say in its statement that they would soon dive into discussions with the unions regarding the matter. Over the years, Dubai based Emirates Airlines was the company’s biggest client and had ordered the highest number of Superjumbos. However, the airline decided to reduce the number of orders for the A380 Superjumbo and instead decided to go for smaller airlines produced by Airbus. That has, without a doubt, been the biggest reason behind this decision. The other major client is Japanese airline ANA, and according to the statement, Airbus will make 3 more A380 Superjumbo planes for them and 17 more for Emirates before ceasing production altogether.

The chairman of Emirates Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum expressed his disappointment about the developments. He said, “Emirates has been a staunch supporter of the A380 since its very inception. While we are disappointed to have to give up our order, and sad that the programme could not be sustained, we accept that this is the reality of the situation.”  The Superjumbo had been one of the most ambitious projects by Airbus that was aimed at ending the near monopoly of Boeing in the large commercial aircraft space and after a good run since 2005; the development of twin-engined planes badly hit the demand for aircraft like the A380. The talks about the end of production had been in the works for quite some time now, and it remains to be seen what the company does next to boost revenues.

Indian commercial vehicle giant Tata Motors has announced that it, along with Tata Motors Finance, will be entering into a strategic tie-up with Kool-ex Cold Chain Limited, a leading pharma cold chain logistics service provider, to supply 200 factory built reefer trucks. It will be a first of its kind transaction for both the companies.

This unique tie-up will see Tata Motors manufacturing specially built reefer trucks which will be pharma compliant. It will be a one-stop solution for Kool-ex Cold Chain and will be covered under the Tata Sampoorna Seva umbrella of value-added services. The project will be funded by Tata Motors Finance Group with a mixture of equity and debt, making it a single window transaction. In a statement, the company stated that these reefer trucks would be built on the popular Tata LPT 1613 MCV and Tata LPT 2518 multi-axle trucks.

Kool-ex has been one of the most loyal clients of Tata Motors for the past sixteen years. The company is all set to become one of the largest pharma cold chain logistics players in the country, and this partnership is being considered as a stepping stone in the journey. The company will also be shortly entering in the cold chain warehousing segment, with its first commercial project expected to materialize near Pune, making it a completely integrated 3PL cold chain logistics service provider.

Kool-ex Cold Chain Director, Rahul Agarwal, has said that Tata Motors has been an integral part of the Mumbai based company since its inception. He further added that Kool-ex is strategically expanding its product portfolios and reinforcing its expertise in various segments to cater to growing customer requirements. Agarwal also said the company believes that specialized needs of the ever-expanding e-commerce and cold chain industries will give birth to newer opportunities for niche organized logistics players in the near future.

Commenting on this collaboration, R T Wasan, marketing, and sales head, Tata motors CVBU, stated that as the leading commercial vehicle player in the industry, Tata Motors aims to work closely with its customers and to offer them appropriate solutions for their transportation and logistics requirements. He also said that Tata Motors in association with Kool-ex has co-developed a fully built reefer unit. This will help meet sophisticated and rapidly growing logistics requirements of the pharma industry due to the anticipated changes in regulations concerned with transportation and storage.

Shyam Mani, Managing Director of Tata Motors Finance Group, said that the company was elated to be a part of this one of a kind collaboration to provide one-stop finance solution to Kool-ex Cold Chain. He informed that as a part of this tie-up, they will not only be providing vehicle finance through Tata Motors Finance Limited (TMFL) but will also provide mezzanine equity finance to the company through Tata Motors Finance Solutions Limited (TMFSL), making this a structured financing deal.

The announcement of this collaboration saw the stocks of Tata Motors soar by 4.45% to Rs 159.45. Last week, the prices fell by 29% after the company posted a Rs 26,960 crore loss in Q3.