GOVERNMENT

Boston Fed executive to retire

Jeff Fuhrer, an executive vice president and senior policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, will retire early next year, wrapping up a 35-year career with the Federal Reserve System. The Boston Fed said Wednesday that Fuhrer will step down at the end of September, though he will continue working on monetary policy advising and Federal Open Market Committee matters through the end of January. After starting with the Fed as a senior economist in Washington in 1985, Fuhrer moved to the Boston Fed in 1992 as an assistant vice president and economist, and from 1995 to 2001 he headed its open economy macro/international section. In 2000, Fuhrer was named senior vice president and monetary policy adviser. In 2001, he became director of research, and in 2006 he was named executive vice president. Fuhrer earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Princeton University, and his master’s and PhD in economics from Harvard. — LARRY EDELMAN

ENERGY

Vineyard Wind CEO confident that federal review will wrap up shortly

The Vineyard Wind project is running out of time, but Avangrid chief executive James Torgerson told investors on Wednesday that he remains confident that a crucial federal review can be concluded shortly. Torgerson was referring on the quarterly earnings call to a delay in a final permit from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. He said the company needs the permit within the next four to six weeks to keep the $2.8 billion project going in its current form. In particular, he said, the company needs to get the project completed in 2021 to take advantage of a 24 percent federal tax credit. The Vineyard Wind partnership, a joint venture owned by Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, won energy contracts last year in a state-orchestrated auction. The contracts will help a Vineyard Wind venture finance the 800-megawatt wind farm, to be built about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. — JON CHESTO

FOOD

Dunkin’ jumps on the faux-meat bandwagon

Beyond Meat Inc., the faux-meat company that’s seen its stock rally almost 700 percent since its May public offering, has notched another fast-food client. Dunkin’ will offer a Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwich at 163 restaurants in Manhattan at a cost of $4.29 — 14 cents more than its meat-based equivalent. After New York, the plan is to go national with the menu item. The sausage was developed as a collaboration between the two companies and features a proprietary spice blend that’s meant to match the flavor of Dunkin’s sausage sandwich, Beyond Meat chief executive Ethan Brown said in an interview. — BLOOMBERG

ROBOTS

IRobot caught in trade war with China

IRobot Corp.’s outlook for the year turned murkier after the Roomba maker’s domestic sales were once again caught up in the US trade war with China, which weighed on results for a second straight quarter. US sales account for about half of IRobot total revenue. The Bedford robot manufacturer reduced its revenue forecast for 2019 and said recently-increased tariffs could weigh on gross margins in 2020, sending shares tumbling to their lowest level in over a year Wednesday. — BLOOMBERG

PHARMACEUTICALS

company exec says the public is not a consideration in shipping opioids

An executive at one of the nation’s largest drug distribution companies said under questioning recently that the business has no obligation to the public when it comes to the amount of prescription opioid painkillers it ships. That’s one of the exchanges included in thousands of pages of court documents, including depositions and internal e-mails, made public this week in lawsuits brought against the pharmaceutical industry over the nation’s deadly opioid crisis. In a testy line of questioning in a deposition earlier this year, Cardinal Health counsel Jennifer Norris was asked by a lawyer whether the company wants to ‘‘ensure that it does what it can to prevent the public from harm?’’ She answered: ‘‘I don’t know that Cardinal owes a duty to the public regarding that.’’ — ASSOCIATED PRESS

DELIVERY

DoorDash to rethink its pay policy

DoorDash Inc. chief executive Tony Xu, facing public criticism that the food-delivery company pays drivers less when they receive tips, said his company would rethink its approach to handling in-app tips. Unlike many of its competitors, DoorDash relies on customers’ tips to meet guarantees to drivers about how much they’ll earn on a particular delivery. In some cases, much of a driver’s pay for a delivery can come from a tip. If a tip is large enough, the San Francisco-based startup may itself pay as little as $1 to a driver. — BLOOMBERG

CORPORATE OVERSIGHT

At last, S&P 500’s bid adieu to All-male boards

The all-male board is officially a thing of the S&P 500’s past. Copart Inc., the last company in the index without a female director, appointed CyrusOne CFO Diane Morefield to its board of directors this week. Earlier this year, Skechers and TripAdvisor Inc also added women. The final stretch of progress has been slow. In 2000, about 86 percent of S&P 500 companies had at least one women on their board according to Spencer Stuart. The last 14 percent of companies have taken almost 20 years to close the gap. — BLOOMBERG

GOVERNMENT

Former Delta executive confirmed to become head of FAA

A former Air Force pilot and Delta Air Lines executive was confirmed Wednesday by the Senate to lead the Federal Aviation Administration after overcoming Democratic opposition and claims he mistreated a whistle-blower during his tenure at Delta. The 52-40 vote on Stephen Dickson (left) broke along party lines. The FAA has been without a confirmed administrator since January 2018 and has been led since then by an acting chief, former American Airlines pilot Daniel Elwell. Dickson is a former Air Force pilot who spent 27 years at Delta, first as a pilot and later overseeing pilots as the senior vice president of flight operations until he retired last fall. President Trump nominated him in March after publicly pondering the possibility of picking his personal pilot for the job. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

GOVERNMENT

Mnuchin says Amazon ‘destroyed’ the retail industry

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday he supported the Justice Department’s efforts to look into Amazon because the tech giant has ‘‘destroyed the retail industry.’’ ‘‘I think if you look at Amazon, although there are certain benefits to it, they’ve destroyed the retail industry across the United States, so there’s no question they’ve limited competition,’’ Mnuchin said during an interview on CNBC. ‘‘There’s areas where they’ve really hurt small businesses.’’ Mnuchin made the comments one day after the Justice Department announced it was opening a wide-ranging antitrust review of ‘‘market-leading online platforms,’’ an unprecedented inquiry that could heighten calls for Amazon, Facebook, and Google to be broken up. Amazon spokeswoman Jodi Seth said the company’s retail revenue make up less than 4 percent of US retail sales, and less than 1 percent globally. ‘‘Small and medium-sized businesses are thriving with Amazon,’’ she said in an email. ‘‘Today, independent sellers make up more than 58 percent of physical gross merchandise sales on Amazon, and their sales have grown twice as fast as our own, totaling $160 billion in 2018.’’ The company added that ‘‘the vast majority of retail sales — 90 percent — still occur in brick-and-mortar stores.’’ — WASHINGTON POST