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The Morning Risk Report: U.S. Retrieves Millions in Ransom Paid to Colonial Pipeline Hackers
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Fuel tanks at a Colonial Pipeline station in Washington.
PHOTO: DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
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U.S. law-enforcement officials said Monday they had recovered millions of dollars in digital currency paid to the hackers who hit Colonial Pipeline Co. with a ransomware attack last month, a strike that prompted the shutdown of the main conduit for gasoline and diesel fuel to the U.S. East Coast.
Investigators seized nearly 64 bitcoin, valued at roughly $2.3 million, that were allegedly the proceeds from the ransom hack on Colonial Pipeline, the Justice Department said.
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“The extortionists will never see this money,” Stephanie Hinds, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, told reporters. “This case demonstrates our resolve to develop methods to prevent evildoers from converting new methods of payment into tools and extortion for undeserved profits.”
Colonial Pipeline, which transports gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined products from the Gulf Coast to Linden, N.J., was shut down for six days in May as the company responded to the ransomware attack. The stoppage spurred a run on gasoline along parts of the East Coast that pushed prices to the highest levels in more than six years and left thousands of gas stations without fuel.
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‘We have a problem in this country. We have a problem that there is tremendous market power in very, very few hands,’ said New York state Sen. Michael Gianaris.
PHOTO: HANS PENNINK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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The New York state Senate passed legislation Monday making it easier for plaintiffs to win antimonopoly lawsuits, in the latest state-led effort to rein in large technology companies in the absence of action by Congress.
The antitrust bill was opposed by business groups and backed by unions and other critics of corporate giants such as Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. To become law, it also must pass the state assembly and be signed by the governor.
Monday’s 43-20 party line vote represented an incremental victory for advocates of tougher antitrust laws, who will seek to use it as a springboard to tougher laws in other states and at the federal level.
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Gary Gensler, Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, speaks during the Wall Street Journal's CFO Network event on Monday, June 7, 2021. CREDIT: The Wall Street Journal
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The Securities and Exchange Commission is drafting a proposal that would restrict plans that corporate insiders use to avoid insider-trading claims when buying or selling their own company’s stock.
Speaking Monday at The Wall Street Journal’s CFO Network event, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said he is seeking to revise rules that govern the arrangements, known as 10b5-1 plans. Insiders set up plans ahead of time and use them to schedule future trades. The arrangement gives executives a defense against insider-trading claims that would stem from having undisclosed material nonpublic information at the time of a trade.
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Federal prosecutors are set to present their case that Tennessee scientist Anming Hu hid his China collaborations from the U.S. government while also receiving National Aeronautics and Space Administration grants for his work. The trial in Knoxville is the first after a slew of arrests of researchers and years of rising concerns among U.S. authorities that American taxpayers are unwittingly funding Chinese scientific development and boosting China’s drive for global pre-eminence.
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U.S. health regulators approved the first new Alzheimer’s drug in nearly two decades, casting aside doubts about the therapy’s effectiveness. The approval Monday of the therapy, which has the molecular name aducanumab and will be sold as Aduhelm, marked a watershed in Alzheimer’s drug research after billions of dollars in investment. Maker Biogen Inc. developed the therapy to do what previously approved Alzheimer’s medicines can’t: slow the memory-robbing march of the disease.
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Bill Hwang, shown in 2012. The collapse of his firm Archegos in March resulted in billions of losses at Credit Suisse, which financed it.
PHOTO: EMILE WAMSTEKER/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Months after the collapse of Archegos Capital Management, Credit Suisse Group AG is picking over what went so badly wrong.
Archegos had borrowed billions from Credit Suisse to make wagers on a handful of stocks. As is standard practice, the firm had handed over cash to Credit Suisse to secure its bets. But it later asked for some of that money back, and it was credited, according to people familiar with the matter.
Now, Credit Suisse is trying to figure out why it gave the money back, and, more broadly, why it backed risky bets to a level that went wildly beyond all its stated norms and projections.
A preliminary conclusion is emerging: Credit Suisse’s creaky risk-management systems didn’t do their job as the bank’s guardrails and left it highly exposed to human errors in judgment, according to current and former people at the bank.
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Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference began Monday with a keynote speech by CEO Tim Cook streamed on the company’s website.
PHOTO: APPLE
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A year after angering software developers with new privacy features aimed at making it harder to track iPhone users’ digital footprints, Apple Inc. on Monday doubled down with even more changes that will roil the digital advertising industry.
Among the numerous updates to popular apps, such as Maps, Wallet and Weather, the Cupertino, Calif., technology giant said it would introduce later this year additional features to help users control how their online data is used by third-parties.
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Mining companies are trying to tap into the flood of cash targeting green investments by touting their production of materials that go into wind turbines, power lines and batteries.
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Retiring CEO Peter Wong held the top job in Asia for 11 years.
PHOTO: ROSS KINNAIRD/GETTY IMAGES
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HSBC Holdings PLC on Monday said its Asia-Pacific CEO Peter Wong is retiring and it has appointed two veteran bankers to take over the running of its business in the region.
The London-based banking giant named David Liao and Surendra Rosha as Asia-Pacific co-CEOs with immediate effect, giving them oversight of a business that is HSBC’s biggest profit generator.
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