Good morning. Barclays has been fined roughly $56 million for lapses in dealings with risky customers, including a client tied to one of Britain’s biggest money-laundering cases.

U.K. regulators fined the bank more than 39 million pounds, equivalent to $52 million, for failing to detect and manage money-laundering risks in its yearslong relationship with Stunt & Co., a gold firm run by socialite James Stunt. It received a separate £3 million fine Wednesday for its dealings with a failed wealth-management firm, WealthTek.

• The background: The FCA ruling gave a detailed account of the relationship between Barclays and James Stunt—the former son-in-law of Formula One magnate Bernie Ecclestone—and his company. Stunt opened a personal account at the bank in 2005, and his gold firm applied for a business account a decade later. From the outset, the FCA said, Barclays didn’t seek enough information on the company to assess money-laundering risk.
   
• A black eye for Barclays: Under Chief Executive C.S. Venkatakrishnan, it has sought to draw a line under an era marked by a string of embarrassments, such as selling billions of dollars in unregistered securities and the controversy over former CEO Jes Staley’s links to Jeffrey Epstein.
   
• Barclays’s response: “Barclays fully cooperated with both investigations and has further strengthened its financial crime and other control capabilities.”

SEC to drop bribery case against former Cognizant execs.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is asking a federal judge to dismiss its case against two former Cognizant Technology Solutions executives over an alleged foreign bribery scheme.

Attorneys for the SEC and lawyers for the two defendants in a joint stipulation filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey asked a judge to drop the case with prejudice, according to court records.

• European crypto firms must implement robust protections against financial crime, the EU’s new Anti-Money Laundering Authority, known as AMLA, warned, as the regulator officially launched its supervisory powers.
   
• The U.K. government operates a risk-based customs compliance system to monitor imports from countries subject to arms embargoes and trade sanctions, with controls tailored to underlying risks, Secretary of the Exchequer James Murray said.
   
• A former New York City Police commissioner has filed a federal lawsuit alleging Mayor Eric Adams and other top officials ran the police department as a criminal enterprise, engaging in racketeering, wire fraud and obstruction of justice.
   
• The Justice Department on Wednesday fired federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, who was involved in a number of high-profile criminal cases including those of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, people familiar with the matter said.

Trump denies he is planning to attempt to fire Powell.

President Trump denied that he was planning an attempt to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell after polling Republican lawmakers during a closed-door meeting about whether he should oust him.

“We’re not planning on doing anything,” Trump told reporters at the White House, adding later, “I don’t rule out anything, but I think it’s highly unlikely. Unless he has to leave for fraud.” The president suggested he could attempt to remove Powell for cause, arguing the central bank spent too much money on renovations of two historic office buildings.

During a meeting Tuesday at the White House, Trump said, he asked GOP lawmakers how they felt about firing the Fed chair and several expressed support for the idea. The president then suggested he could move to fire Powell in the near future, according to a senior administration official.

• Bank CEOs Are Coming Out Fighting for Fed Independence
• What History Tells Us About the Perils of Firing Jerome Powell
• In Dress Rehearsal for Trump Firing a Fed Chairman, U.S. Markets Sank—Then Steadied

• Inflation unexpectedly rose in the U.K., likely keeping policymakers at the Bank of England cautious despite a limping economy.
   
• Europe’s exports to the U.S. fell for the second consecutive month in May after a first-quarter boom, but remained higher than a year earlier, a sign of resilience that will be tested as higher tariffs look set to become a settled feature of trans-Atlantic trade.
   
• Canada introduced limits on how much foreign steel produced in countries other than the U.S. and Mexico can be imported, as the Liberal government tries to help a domestic sector reeling from President Trump’s 50% tariffs on Canadian steel.
   
• The Patriot air-defense system is lauded by militaries around the world for its ability to shoot down deadly drones and missiles. Now, a new version of a European weapon is set to challenge its dominance and test whether the region can wean itself off U.S. arms.
   
• Vigilante groups are increasingly taking control of Russia’s streets and imposing their version of nationalist, pro-Kremlin order as police leave for higher salaries fighting in the war in Ukraine.

Noréus will start on May 1, 2026, replacing Rolf Marquardt, who will become a senior adviser once Noréus officially joins the Stockholm-based bank.

• The head of America’s most valuable company delivered a love letter to China while visiting Beijing, extolling the country’s technological advances and praising its “best-in-the-world” electric vehicles.
   
• President Trump’s aggressive deportation policies are spawning a new GOP-led policy push in Congress: Specific immigration-law changes to help protect the workforce in the agriculture industry, which relies heavily on unauthorized laborers.
   
• President Trump lashed out at his own supporters for opposing his administration’s decision not to release more material from the investigation into disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, accusing them of buying into a Democratic narrative.

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