Competition regulators in Italy have fined Amazon $1.3 billion, accusing the company “of breaking antitrust laws by giving special perks to third-party merchants who use Amazon’s warehouse and delivery system.” The penalty, the result of a two-year probe, focuses on the company’s “Fulfillment by Amazon” feature, which has also piqued the interest of EU authorities - NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch
Instagram’s lead, Adam Mosseri, did the near-impossible and managed to unite the parties in criticism of his photo-sharing site, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle “expressing deep skepticism and anger toward the company for not doing enough to protect young users”—particularly in light of “internal researched leaked by a whistle-blower that showed Instagram had a toxic effect on some teenagers” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and Mashable and TechCrunch
A federal appeals court has granted Apple a stay of a “legal order requiring it to make policy changes to its App Store that could help app developers circumvent what they say are unfair fees” while the company appeals the Apple/Epic Games verdict from September - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and TechCrunch and Law360
The inevitable finally occurred this week in China, with struggling property giant Evergrande finally failing to make two bond payments. That was Monday, and earlier today, rating agency Fitch formally placed the company in its “restricted default” category, which it reserves for organizations that have “formally defaulted but ha[ve] not yet entered into any kind of bankruptcy filing, liquidation or other process that would stop its operations” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
Better.com CEO Vishal Garg is taking a media drubbing over his move last week to fire 900 employees—about 9% of the mortgage lender’s workforce—in a Zoom call with the affected workers - NYTimes
Markets found themselves on the upswing for a third consecutive day, with all three major indices posting muted gains after one of the best back-to-back performances of the year to start the week - NYTimes and Bloomberg
AbbVie unit Allergan has reached a deal with the state of New York (and pair of NY counties) in which it will pay up to $200 million “to settle claims that it helped create a public nuisance by allowing opioids to flood the region” - WSJ and Law360
In another shot in the arm for the booming EV industry (and for green energy broadly), the White House has issued a series of executive orders “ordering federal agencies to buy electric vehicles, to power facilities with wind, solar and nuclear energy, and to use sustainable building materials” in an effort to meet the Biden Administration’s goal of “a federal government that stops adding carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2050” - NYTimes and WSJ
Beijing’s latest economic intervention targets not a particular industry (as it has done with homegrown big tech in the past year) but the nation’s central bank itself, which this week announced it was easing reserve requirements despite policy signals to the contrary “it had sent weeks earlier” - WSJ
If you’re not all over social media, you may have missed the booming synergy between celebs and fast food companies, as the latter are “tripping over themselves to alight their products” with the former “in the hopes that their menu items will appeal to a younger audience” - NYTimes
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