By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. auto safety regulators said on Friday they have opened a formal safety probe into the autonomous driving system in vehicles produced by General Motors Co’s robotaxi unit Cruise LLC after reports of two injuries in rear-end crashes.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it has received notices of incidents in which self-driving Cruise vehicles “may engage in inappropriately hard braking or become immobilized.”

The agency said while both issues “appear to be distinct, they each result in the Cruise vehicles becoming unexpected roadway obstacles.” The safety agency’s preliminary evaluation covers 242 Cruise autonomous vehicles and is the first step before it could seek a recall.

The investigation follows reports of three crashes in which Cruise vehicles were struck from behind by other vehicles after the autonomous vehicles braked quickly.

Cruise is offering limited service in San Francisco with a small fleet of Chevrolet Bolt EVs. Cruise on Thursday announced it had secured the first of the two California permits it needs to charge riders night and day across all of San Francisco, where it currently sells trips in a small part of the city.

Cruise said it has “driven nearly 700,000 fully autonomous miles in an extremely complex urban environment with zero life-threatening injuries or fatalities. … There’s always a balance between healthy regulatory scrutiny and the innovation we desperately need to save lives, which is why we’ll continue to fully cooperate with NHTSA or any regulator in achieving that shared goal.”

NHTSA said it plans to fully assess the potential safety-related issues posed by these two types of incidents and will review “the commonality and safety logic of the hard braking incidents” and the “frequency, duration and safety consequences associated with the vehicle immobilization incidents.”

GM shares were down 3.5% Friday at $36.31 in midday trading.

San Francisco officials did not immediately comment Friday on the NHTSA investigation, which could be a setback to the company’s deployment plans.

Last month, Cruise Chief Operating Officer Gil West told Reuters the company plans to enter a “large number of markets” and scale operations up to “thousands of vehicles” in 2023.

NHTSA said the issues “may introduce multiple potential hazards such as a collision with a Cruise vehicle, risk to a stranded passenger exiting an immobilized Cruise vehicle, or obstruction of other traffic including emergency vehicles.”

The agency said it has three reports of Cruise vehicles’ automated driving system “initiating a hard braking maneuver in response to another road user that was quickly approaching from the rear. In each case, the other road user subsequently struck the rear of the ADS-equipped vehicle.”

Cruise said police did not ticket their vehicles in any of the three crashes.

NHTSA said it has been notified of multiple reports involving Cruise vehicles operating without onboard human supervision becoming immobilized, which “may strand vehicle passengers in unsafe locations, such as lanes of travel or intersections, and become an unexpected obstacle to other road users.”

Cruise in September recalled and updated software in 80 self-driving vehicles after a June crash in San Francisco that left two people injured. NHTSA said the recalled software could “incorrectly predict” an oncoming vehicle’s path. Cruise said it had determined this unusual scenario would not recur after the update.

GM and Cruise in February disclosed they petitioned the NHTSA for permission to deploy some self-driving vehicles without steering wheels, mirrors, turn signals or windshield wipers. That petition is still pending.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

By Liz Hampton

(Reuters) -U.S. shale oil producers are facing higher costs in the nation’s largest oil field after regulators restricted the use of some wastewater disposal wells in west Texas after the latest in a series of powerful earthquakes struck the region.

Wastewater that comes up with oil and gas production is often pumped back underground, a practice tied to a rise in earthquakes in Oklahoma and Texas oilfields. Regulators in both states have set limits on how much water can be injected, particularly into deep wells.

In mid-November, a magnitude 5.4 earthquake hit an area where operators already were required to reduce disposal volumes. That led Texas to further reduce volumes to 162,000 barrels per day by mid-2023, 68% less water from early 2022 levels in a producing area.

If another magnitude 4.5 or higher quake occurs in that area, all deep wells within the boundary will shut for 24 months from the date of the event, regulators said. The area, called Northern Culberson-Reeves Seismic Response Area, is one of three areas with similar restrictions.

It is close to the New Mexico border and has 78 active disposal wells. The latest restrictions affect 19 new deep wells that together were handling some 400,000 barrels of water per day, according to data from researcher B3 Insight.

There is a “very real possibility” of another large quake occurring, said Laura Capper, chief executive of CAP Resources, a water management and risk mitigation consultancy.

“Absolute shut-in of deep wells in the area would cause a significant logistics issue to maintain oil and gas production in highly productive fields in New Mexico and West Texas,” she said.

A ban on using those wells would require oil producers to transport wastewater out of the region, adding to their costs of oil production, but would be unlikely to halt oil production.

The new injection limits encompass 10 deep wastewater wells operated by Chevron Corp, which are permitted to handle some 745,000 barrels of water per day, and nine deep wells operated by Coterra Energy, which can handle 615,000 barrels of water per day.

“Since early 2022, Coterra has decreased its deep disposal volumes in the Delaware Basin by over 50% and expects to have little to no disposal into the deep zone by mid-year 2023, therefore we do not see an impact on production,” a spokesperson said.

Chevron did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shale executives this year warned that output growth could continue to slow. Production in the Permian is forecast to rise by 37,300 bpd next month, to 5.58 million bpd, the slower than gains seen in recent months.

(Reporting by Liz Hampton in Denver; Editing by Stephen Coates and Cynthia Osterman)

(Reuters) – Social media company TikTok on Friday said it would cut its Russian staff numbers after the company stopped key services for Russian users earlier this year.

Chinese-owned video app TikTok suspended livestreaming and new uploads in Russia after Moscow introduced strict new media censorship following its invasion of Ukraine in February.

“We have had to make a number of decisions this year about our service in Russia, which now unfortunately includes reducing our Russia-based workforce,” the company said in a statement.

“We will continue to evaluate the evolving circumstances in Russia to determine when we might fully resume our services with safety as our top priority,” it said.

(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by David Ljunggren and Mark Porter)

By Medha Singh

(Reuters) – Retail investors are doubling down on Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) as rising interest rates and volatile markets curb their appetite for risky assets such as meme stocks, SPACs and cryptocurrencies.

Global financial markets have taken a beating as central banks try to combat runaway inflation with aggressive rate hikes, thereby ending years of loose monetary policy that had underpinned a record rise in the prices of such assets.

Vanda Research highlighted a largely risk-off sentiment among investors in its latest report by pointing to a 4.4% year-over-year drop in single-stock purchases by retail traders to $173 billion even as inflows into ETFs rose nearly 14% to $116 billion.

On average, retail investors’ portfolios are down about 39% in 2022 after recording gains of 18% in 2021, JPMorgan analysts Peng Cheng and Emma Wu said.

Graphic: Retail traders net sold single stocks in 2022, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/znpnbblnypl/jpm.PNG “The ethos is really starting to spread in the retail investor community that if you want to build wealth through your investments, take a long-term view,” Maximilian Rofagha, chief executive officer of Finimize, an abdrn-owned insights firm, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum (GMF).

Finimize’s recent survey of 2,300 retail punters showed that despite their worries of a recession, only 1% wanted to exit their investments, with about 65% planning to continue investing and 29% aiming to invest more despite the cost-of-living crisis.

The investment trend, however, is leaning more toward ETFs tracking broader markets and away from the meme stock frenzy of 2021 that saw retail investors banding together on social media forums to fuel eye-popping gains in GameStop, AMC and others. Shares of GameStop and AMC are down 63% and 45%, respectively, this year.

S&P 500 index-tracking SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust is the most purchased U.S. security among equities by retail investors this year, attracting $26.4 billion in inflows, compared with $17.7 billion last year, Vanda data showed.

Other top five purchases include Nasdaq-100 index-tracking Invesco QQQ Trust as well as the ever-popular shares of Apple Inc, Tesla Inc and Advanced Micro Devices.

The sudden spike in borrowing costs, soaring inflation and fears of a looming recession have weighed on the ability of the Americans to stomach wild swings in stocks this year.

“We don’t expect any speculative bursts to hold without a sustained rebound in both their portfolio and across the market,” Vanda Research analyst Lucas Mantle said.

Retail investors’ average daily trading volume in U.S. stocks has amounted to $13.8 billion so far in 2022, compared with $14.2 billion a year earlier, which was the peak of meme stock trading frenzy, according to the report.

“Where is future growth going to come from? Fundamentals matter more in the environment that we are in right now when you’re starting to see questions like ‘are we in a recession or not,'” said Brian Mulberry, client portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management in Chicago.

As for the coming year, January could see strong equity inflows from retail clients, especially after down market years like 2022, Bank of America Global Research said, citing data that dates back to 2008.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday voted to propose some of the biggest changes to American equity market structure in nearly two decades, aimed at boosting transparency and fairness while increasing competition for individual investors’ stock orders.

(Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Lisa Pauline Mattackal; Editing by Anil D’Silva)

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Chinese officials have agreed to participate in a global sovereign debt “roundtable” that would include a wide variety of stakeholders, including private sector creditors, International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday.

Georgieva told an event hosted by the IMF that she was feeling “a bit more optimistic” about the prospects for dealing with major debt issues facing low- and middle-income countries after high-level meetings with Chinese authorities last week.

The IMF chief last week she had a “fruitful exchange” with her Chinese counterparts on the need to accelerate debt relief for countries like Zambia and Sri Lanka, adding that she saw “space for a platform for more systematic engagement on debt issues, where China can play an active role.”

On Thursday, Georgieva said she had a “very constructive engagement” with Chinese leaders on the debt issue during her meetings after repeated calls for reforms to accelerate debt treatments under the Group of 20 common framework and expand it to include middle-income countries.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other Western officials have expressed mounting frustration about what they see as foot-dragging by China, now the world’s largest sovereign creditor, in providing relief under the G20 framework.

China has argued that private creditors and multilateral development banks should be required to accept debt “haircuts” to make the process fair.

Kevin Gallagher, director of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, said a broader, more systemic solution was clearly needed.

“Systemic could be music to all of our ears, if it means really bringing together all the different creditor classes, including the multilateral development banks, but especially the private bondholders and the Chinese,” he said.

He said it was also essential to move away from the case-by-case approach of the G20 framework toward the more systemic approach of earlier debt restructurings.

Georgieva said the discussions in China yielded some progress.

“We agreed that we should form a global sovereign debt roundtable at the highest level – the key creditors, some of the borrowers, the private sector – with the World Bank, the IMF and the G20 presidency being the co-conveners,” she said.

“We need that place … We cannot have solutions for systemic risk with the parties to this solution being in different rooms and not talking to each other at the same time. That just cannot happen,” she said.

The proposed roundtable offered a structure to help improve the debt treatment process and avoid a systemic debt crisis, she said.

No further details were immediately available about the roundtable and when it could have an initial meeting.

Georgieva, World Bank President David Malpass and other financial leaders met in China’s Anhui province last week with officials from the People’s Bank of China, China’s finance ministry and its EXIM Bank and China Development Bank.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Grant McCool and Andrea Ricci)

By Yuvraj Malik

-Accenture Plc warned that a pullback in spending from clients who were postponing business improvement projects, especially in retail, was hurting its consulting business and forecast quarterly sales that could miss market estimates.

Shares in the company fell as much as 6% on Friday.

After a pandemic-led boom, spending on IT and transformation projects is slowing as companies prioritize projects that deliver stronger return-on-investments in an uncertain economy.

Customers “are more and more focused on cost resilience and many of them are having to make really hard choices,” Chief Executive Julie Sweet told a post-earnings conference call.

Sweet said Accenture’s strategy and consulting business would decline slightly in the second quarter. She added clients were still spending on technology, cloud services and on projects that helped cut costs, but advertising and marketing initiatives were shrinking, and retailers had cut back majorly.

Accenture forecast revenue between $15.20 billion and $15.75 billion for its second quarter ending Feb. 28. Analysts expected $15.61 billion, according to Refinitiv.

Last month, rival Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp slashed its revenue and profit guidance for this year, citing higher costs and pullback in contracts.

There will be softer demand for new consulting projects in fiscal 2023, said Julie Sharma, equity analyst at Morningstar.

“We think generally, caution will persist – leading to delays in decision making, and that spending will be the softest in smaller deals over larger deals, where hitting the pause button has more repercussions,” Sharma added.

The weak outlook commentary overshadowed Accenture’s higher-than-expected revenue and earnings in the first quarter ended Nov. 30, when sales grew 5% to $15.7 billion, surpassing an average analysts’ estimate of $15.58 billion.

Adjusted earnings of $3.08 per share beat an average estimate of $2.91.

(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)