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The Morning Risk Report: U.S. Prosecutors Charge Former Fox Sports Executives in FIFA Bribery Case
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Two former Fox Sports executives were charged with bribing FIFA officials in exchange for broadcasting rights. PHOTO: STEFFEN SCHMIDT/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Good morning. Two former Fox Sports executives have been charged with participating in an alleged scheme to pay millions of dollars in bribes to soccer officials in exchange for broadcasting rights.
Hernan Lopez and Carlos Martinez helped bribe officials at Conmebol, FIFA’s soccer confederation in South America, according to a U.S. grand jury indictment unsealed Monday. The two men were high-ranking executives of a Fox Sports international subsidiary, where they were responsible for developing Fox’s sports broadcasting business in South America, prosecutors said.
The charges are part of a sprawling corruption investigation into FIFA that was first revealed in 2015, when federal prosecutors in New York unsealed racketeering and bribery related charges against some of the organization’s most prominent figures.
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Mr. Lopez, a 47-year-old dual U.S. and Argentine citizen, who served as chief executive of the Fox Sports subsidiary, and Mr. Martinez, a 51-year-old dual U.S. and Mexican citizen who served as its president, were charged with wire fraud and money laundering, according to the indictment.
“We are certain a jury will swiftly exonerate Carlos, as these charges are nothing more than stale fiction,” Steven McCool, a lawyer for Mr. Martinez, said in a statement.
Matthew Umhofer, a lawyer for Mr. Lopez, attacked the government for bringing the charges against his client. “The indictment contains nothing more than a single paragraph about Mr. Lopez that alleges nothing remotely improper,” Mr. Umhofer said in a statement.
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ENI Discusses Corruption Settlement with SEC
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ENI SpA says it’s in advanced discussions with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about a potential resolution to the regulator’s corruption investigation into the Italian oil-and-gas company.
ENI has faced allegations of bribery around gas pipeline contracts awarded to its former subsidiary Saipem SpA in Algeria. The company disclosed the matter to the SEC and the U.S. Justice Department in 2012.
The company has already resolved the matter with the Justice Department, which said in September that it was closing a parallel criminal investigation into ENI without taking any action. The company has said that an internal investigation it conducted found no evidence of wrongdoing by ENI employees in connection with the contracts awarded to Saipem.
—Dylan Tokar
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The SEC has the authority to temporarily suspend trading in stocks for 10 days to protect investors if it has concerns about a company or unusual trading activity in its shares. PHOTO: ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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The Securities and Exchange Commission suspended trading in two stocks over potentially inaccurate information about their activities in response to the new coronavirus pandemic.
One of them, Arizona-based No Borders Inc., had cited support from members of Congress in promoting plans for new testing kits for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Trading in shares of No Borders—whose other businesses include selling dental supplies—and Sandy Steele Unlimited Inc., a clothing maker, was suspended effective Monday morning after the SEC issued suspension orders for the two stocks on Friday.
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The Trump administration branded a Russian white supremacist group and its top members as global terrorists, making use of a tool normally used to target radical Islamist groups overseas. The designation named the Russian Imperial Movement, or RIM, a Russia-based organization with ties to European and U.S.-based white supremacists, as special designated global terrorists, the State Department said.
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President Trump said the government would buy nearly 167 million masks from 3M over the next three months, resolving a spat with the industrial conglomerate over efforts to ramp up supply of gear for front-line workers confronting the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Trump criticized 3M’s mask-making efforts last week and invoked the Defense Production Act against the company. That Korean War-era law gives the president power to compel manufacturers to make operational changes in the national interest.
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The lawyers who negotiated a $13.5 billion settlement for California wildfire victims with PG&E said that they no longer support the current deal, a major setback for the giant utility’s efforts to exit bankruptcy. The deal proposes to pay victims half their settlement in PG&E shares. The lawyers are now concerned the payment in shares will be less than projected as the stock market falls under the weight of the coronavirus pandemic.
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The Supreme Court sided with federal employees raising age-discrimination claims, finding that Congress gave its civil servants greater protection than those in the private sector. In a second decision issued Monday, the court eased Fourth Amendment limits on police, holding that an officer is free to assume that a car’s driver is its registered owner, and to pull the vehicle over if the owner’s license has been revoked.
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Resort towns rely on visitors as their economic lifeblood, but as the new coronavirus pandemic rages, many are asking nonresidents to stay away. The right to travel isn’t explicit in the Constitution, but judges have invoked it to strike down laws like those passed in California to stop migration during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, said Rick Su, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.
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‘Entering into a crisis is not the time to figure out what you want to be,’ JPMorgan CEO James Dimon wrote in his annual letter. PHOTO: JEENAH MOON/REUTERS
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In his annual letter published Monday, JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive James Dimon said the work preparing the bank to be a “port in the storm” means the bank can handle what he expects to be a “bad recession.”
In internal stress testing, he said the nation’s biggest bank would be able to increase lending to clients even if U.S. gross domestic product were to drop 35% in the second quarter and stay there for the remainder of the year. That kind of collapse, once considered unthinkable, is now in line with some economists’ predictions for the second quarter this year, though others expect a substantive rebound in the third quarter.
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Almost any way you look at it, Americans’ outlook on the economy faltered significantly last month as the coronavirus crisis began to take hold in the U.S. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in its latest Survey of Consumer Expectations that just about every measure of what the public thinks about the future of the economy, be it job related or financial, tumbled last month, as broad swaths of the economy shut down.
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A stricken Chinese lender will unload $21 billion of assets to the central bank for less than a third of their reported value, as Beijing moves to shore up the country’s overextended smaller banks. The sale by Bank of Jinzhou Co. is part of a broader overhaul of the bank announced last month.
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Banks stand to lose more than $100 million from a loan they made to the chairman of Luckin Coffee Inc., whose share price plunged after the Chinese coffee chain last week said much of its 2019 sales were fabricated.
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Dublin’s Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin is using software robots to speed up processing of test results for Covid-19. Pictured: Members of the public walk past a statue of James Joyce in Dublin, April 3, 2020. PHOTO: NIALL CARSON/ZUMA PRESS
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Hospitals, grocery stores and other essential services are enlisting robots in the fight against the coronavirus outbreak, accelerating an already fast-growing market for workplace automation, industry analysts say. The deployments include both software and hardware robots.
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The coronavirus pandemic is hitting U.S. meat operations, slowing and temporarily halting production at some plants as sickness and fear keep workers home. Wholesale egg prices, meanwhile, have more than tripled as consumers’ coronavirus-driven buying clears supermarket shelves, piling up costs for grocers as they struggle to keep the staple in stock and affordable.
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Global container shipping lines have canceled more than 160 sailings over the past week as they try to maintain freight rates in the face of billions of dollars in potential losses driven by falling trade demand.
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From small-town Vermont to Los Angeles, local governments are commandeering shut-down hospitals to add space amid the coronavirus pandemic—a trend that could revamp the market for health-care facilities.
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Betting company William Hill found an alternative candidate after its top choice decided to stay with his current employer amid the coronavirus pandemic. PHOTO: SIMON DAWSON/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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The coronavirus pandemic has paused what was expected to be a busy year for the recruitment of new finance chiefs.
Businesses with CFO vacancies are struggling to find replacements as prospects get cold feet amid the economic fallout from the pandemic, or as they find themselves with renewed importance in their existing companies. Some companies are pulling back on external hiring plans, asking incumbents to stay put for longer or weighing internal interim promotions, executive recruiters say.
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SeaWorld Entertainment said Chief Executive Sergio Rivera has resigned from the company, effective April 4, after being in the post for about five months. The theme-park company said Finance Chief and Treasurer Marc Swanson is serving as interim chief executive, while Chief Accounting Officer Elizabeth Castro Gulacsy is stepping in as interim finance chief and treasurer.
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Advertising holding company Dentsu Inc. named marketing veteran Wendy Clark as the global chief executive of the Dentsu Aegis Network, a collection of ad agencies that include Carat, Mcgarrybowen and iProspect. Ms. Clark had been global president and CEO at DDB Worldwide, part of the ad holding giant Omnicom Group.
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A Carnival ship in Long Beach, Calif., in March. PHOTO: MARK RALSTON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Carnival shares rose 24% after Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund disclosed an 8.2% stake in the world’s largest cruise operator on Monday. The Public Investment Fund’s purchase of 43.51 million shares came as the coronavirus pandemic has put the company’s sailings to a halt.
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Airbnb said it has raised $1 billion in funding from private-equity firms Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners as the company struggles with the decimation of the travel and hospitality industry due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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Foursquare Labs Inc. is merging with yet another location-focused startup, Factual Inc., in an all-stock deal, the companies said. The announcement comes less than a year after Foursquare bought Placed, another purveyor of location data and software, from Snap.
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