DOJ officials have sued poultry processors Cargill, Sanderson Farms, and Wayne Farms over an alleged 20-year “scheme to deceive workers and suppress wages.” The three defendants and “18 others listed in the lawsuit as unnamed co-conspirators” employ “more than 90 percent of poultry processing workers in the country.” With the lawsuit, federal authorities also filed a “consent decree that, if approved by a federal court, would bar the companies from sharing [certain] information and require them to pay $84.8 million to workers harmed by the scheme” - NYTimes and WSJ and Law360 and StarTribune
Tesla disclosed plans on Monday to “increase spending by about $1 billion to ramp up its factories, develop new batteries and finance other projects.” That news came in an SEC filing that also revealed “increased scrutiny” from the Commission as well as a $170 million loss on its recently downsized Bitcoin investment - NYTimes and WSJ
Walmart warned that “higher prices for food and fuel” were prompting consumers to cut back on spending, a trend that is pushing the retail giant into cutting prices (and lowering its financial outlook) in an effort to reduce merchandise levels. The news sent Walmart’s stock tumbling in after-hours trading yesterday evening - WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and NYTimes
The U.S. Department of Energy is lending $2.5 billion to Ultium, a General Motors and LG Energy Solution joint venture, to build batter factories in Ohio, Tennessee, and Michigan as part of the “Biden administration’s plan to promote electric vehicles and reduce dependence on China for critical components” - NYTimes and WSJ
SDNY U.S. Attorney Damian Williams and the SEC have charged 9 defendants in four “unrelated insider-trading cases” announced in a Monday news conference. Though not linked, all of the cases “involved the alleged use of nonpublic information about mergers and acquisitions.” Among the defendants are Brijesh Goel, a former Goldman Sachs VP who has been working at Apollo Global in recent years; former Indiana Congressman Stephen Buyer; and former FBI agent trainee Seth Markin - WSJ and Law360 and NYTimes
Prepping for this week’s anticipated Fed rate hike, currently slated for 75 bps, including when the Fed may decide to slow its rate-increasing roll - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
T-Mobile will pay $350 million to resolve MDL claims over a 2021 breach that allegedly exposed the data of “more than 76 million Americans.” Under the terms of the deal, the mobile giant will also “boost its data security spending by $150 million over the next two years” – Law360
China Evergrande CEO Xia Haijun resigned last week “over his involvement in a plan to funnel $2 billion into Evergrande’s coffers from one of its subsidiaries.” The news is the latest blow to the “embattled Chinese property developer” that is struggling to stay afloat while managing its “crushing $300 billion in debt” - NYTimes
Google engineer Blake Lemoine made news a few weeks ago by raising “ethical concerns about how the company was testing an artificial intelligence chatbot that he believes has achieved consciousness.” Now he’s making news for no longer working at Google - NYTimes
And here you were thinking that our T. Rex scholarship was all good and settled. Not so, especially following the controversial “three-species” theory a team threw out in February and the frenzied debate the paleontology community that’s followed. Oh my - NYTimes
Stay safe,
MDR
The Robins Kaplan Financial Daily Dose features top stories and latest news headlines in financial markets, banking, securities and technology topics.
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