PRESS DIGEST-New York Times business news - Aug 16

Aug 16 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories on the New York Times business pages on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* The buyout firm, Carlyle Group LP, said that it would buy Getty Images, the big provider of high-quality images and video, from another private equity shop for $3.3 billion.

* Investors in Standard Chartered breathed a collective sigh of relief on Wednesday after the British bank agreed to a $340 million fine related to charges that it had laundered hundreds of billions of dollars in money with Iran and lied to regulators.

* Cisco Systems Inc, the world's largest maker of computer networking equipment, delivered quarterly results that slightly surpassed Wall Street's expectations in a challenging environment for corporate technology spending. Net profit rose to $1.9 billion, a 56 percent increase from the quarter a year earlier.

* Johnson & Johnson, which makes a range of personal care products like baby shampoo and acne cream announced plans to remove a host of potentially harmful chemicals, like formaldehyde, from its line of consumer products by the end of 2015.

* A group of big retailers, including 7-Eleven, Best Buy Co Inc, CVS Caremark Corp and Wal-Mart Stores Inc , said that they were forming a company that would offer a way for customers to pay for purchases with their smartphones.

* Caterpillar Inc and the International Association of Machinists said that they had reached a tentative six-year settlement that could end a 15-week strike at the company's hydraulics parts plant in Joliet, Ill.

* A criminal investigation into the collapse of the brokerage firm MF Global Holdings Ltd and the disappearance of about $1 billion in customer money is now heading into its final stage without charges expected against any top executives.

* The market for junk bonds, risky corporate debt that pays high interest rates, is red hot. Such debt, also known as high-yield bonds, has returned 10.2 percent year-to-date, according to a JPMorgan high-yield index. Junk bond funds are on a pace to take in a record amount of money this year.