Good morning. France’s competition authority issued Apple the country’s largest ever antitrust fine against a single company, accusing the maker of iPhones and iPads of orchestrating a distribution cartel with wholesalers that lasted for several years.

The 1.1 billion-euro ($1.23 billion) fine, issued Monday after nearly a decade of investigation, came as part of a decision that also found Apple had effectively imposed prices on some retailers and had “abused the economic dependence” of some of its premium resellers in France.

[Continued below...]

Apple said it strongly disagreed with the decision and would appeal the decision in court.

“The French Competition Authority’s decision is disheartening. It relates to practices from over a decade ago and discarded thirty years of legal precedent that all companies in France rely on with an order that will cause chaos for companies across all industries,” a spokesman for Apple said.

The fine comes as large technology companies are increasingly in the crosshairs of antitrust officials on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U.S., antitrust enforcers at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, as well as at the state level, have separately trained their sights on Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.

Swedbank AB on Saturday named Rolf Marquardt chief risk officer, and said he would take up the position no later than Oct. 1. Mr. Marquardt was recently CFO of Handelsbanken AB but also served as chief risk officer at the bank with experience of compliance and risk control at group level.

Swedbank has been working to strengthen its anti-money-laundering controls since last year, when a report by Swedish broadcaster SVT said customers moved at least $4 billion in suspicious funds, much of it through Russia, through the bank's accounts. The lender is facing regulatory investigations in the U.S. and Europe stemming from alleged lapses in anti-money-laundering compliance.

U.S. households, businesses and investors should brace for a sharp economic downturn in the first half of 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic—and hope for a bounce back during the second half of the year. Along the way, the government is on track to test budget deficit records hit after the 2008 financial crisis, when annual red ink soared past $1.5 trillion.

Those are two main messages coming from economists as they scramble to update forecasts in a health crisis that policy makers are racing to blunt. A contraction in U.S. economic activity, in turn, would mean global recession.

U.S. airlines are seeking over $50 billion in financial assistance from the government, more than three times the size of the industry’s bailout after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Finance chiefs are bracing for the coronavirus pandemic to have a significant impact on their businesses, potentially reducing annual revenue and profit. Business activity in China, meanwhile, turned broadly negative for the first time on record as home sales, construction activity, retail sales and factory output plunged, pushing unemployment to a record high.

• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is preparing a blitz of short-term regulatory relief that officials hope will allow derivatives markets to continue operating smoothly even if participants are ordered to work from home, according to CFTC officials familiar with the plans.
   
• The Food and Drug Administration said late Monday that it will allow private companies to begin marketing coronavirus test kits directly to the public, in a new initiative to ease a chronic shortage of test kits.
   
• White House officials sought to allay concerns among some Republicans and business groups that a bill to provide paid sick leave to workers affected by the coronavirus would pose an undue burden on small employers. 
   
• European bank shares slid and prices on their riskiest debt touched new lows as the region braced for a prolonged economic slowdown as a result of the spreading coronavirus.

A federal judge dismissed part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s case against a Russian firm accused of engaging in a widespread effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, after the Justice Department said the company was trying to game the U.S. court process.

In an unusual filing late Monday, prosecutors said the company was taking advantage of the rights it was offered under the American legal system, but not fulfilling its obligations, and asked to dismiss the case against Concord Management & Consulting LLC and a related company, while leaving charges in the same indictment against other defendants intact. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich granted that request on Monday night.

The case against Concord, which was the only one of the several Russian firms charged by Mr. Mueller’s team that has appeared in court to formally respond to the charges, had earlier been scheduled to go to trial in April.

• The governors of New York and California are proposing significant expansions of state regulatory power over consumer financial services, saying federal oversight has become lax under the Trump administration. 
   
• White House officials sought to allay concerns among some Republicans and business groups that a bill to provide paid sick leave to workers affected by the coronavirus would pose an undue burden on small employers. 
   
• The 2017 tax law is making life harder for U.S. businesses that suffer sudden losses, and Congress is under pressure to relax some of those provisions as the economy reels from the impact of the coronavirus. To help pay for cutting the corporate tax rate, the law curtailed deductions for net operating losses and interest. 
   
• The Senate approved a short-term extension of a batch of expired domestic surveillance powers that lapsed over the weekend, choosing to delay consideration of a host of privacy changes to pivot attention more quickly to the rapidly escalating coronavirus crisis. 
   
• A lawsuit charging that a retired Penn State professor died from asbestos exposure at work could open the door for similar suits, amid a broader cleanup push.
   
• A Los Angeles businessman was convicted on Monday of a billion-dollar tax fraud scheme, after a lengthy trial featuring testimony about international money laundering and a Utah polygamist sect.

Amazon plans to hire an additional 100,000 employees in the U.S. as millions of people turn to online deliveries at an unprecedented pace and Americans continue to reorient their lives to limit the spread of the new coronavirus.

Amazon plans to deploy the new workers to fuel its sprawling e-commerce machine and is raising pay for all employees in fulfillment centers, transportation, stores and deliveries in the U.S. and Canada by $2 an hour through April. In the U.K., it will go up £2 ($2.45) per hour and approximately €2 ($2.24) an hour in many EU countries, according to the company. Amazon now pays $15-per-hour as a starting wage to workers in its fulfillment centers around the U.S.

The tech giant’s decision to go on a hiring spree and boost worker pay shows the dual challenge companies such as Amazon face as they seek to meet surging demand for food and key household items and also take care of employees at the front lines of the pandemic.

• Starbucks said it would begin to offer 20 free therapy sessions a year for all of its employees, including part-time workers, as part of a broader mental-health benefit plan. The move makes the coffee chain one of the most high-profile employers of hourly service workers to give significant mental-health benefits, human-resource consultants say.
   
• Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Peugeot maker PSA Group are stopping almost all car production in Europe while Volkswagen has shut factories in Italy and Spain, as global manufacturers try to protect workers from the spread of the new coronavirus and supply lines start to break down. U.S. factories largely remain open, though some say that could change if part shortages become critical or public health guidelines change.

U.S. Health and Human Services experienced an undefined “cyber incident” over the weekend as the department works to address the growing spread of the novel coronavirus epidemic, according to officials.

The precise details of the episode couldn’t be determined, but a U.S. official familiar with the matter described it as minor and not something that affected HHS functions or its website’s ability to stay online.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, speaking at an afternoon news conference in the White House, said the department had no penetration into its networks and that remote work wasn’t impacted. “The source of this enhanced activity remains under investigation,” Mr. Azar said.

Timothy Sloan, the Wells Fargo chief executive who left last year after failing to turn around the troubled lender, lost $15 million in compensation after he exited.

The company’s board of directors decided to claw back that money, which had been granted to him in early 2019, according to a regulatory filing released late Monday. The disclosure also said he left with no severance.

In making its decision, the board took into account the timing of his resignation, the company’s performance and the status of its outstanding regulatory matters, according to the filing.

• Lockheed Martin turned to an outsider to succeed Chief Executive Marillyn Hewson, appointing telecom industry veteran James Taiclet to lead the world’s largest defense company by sales.

• Comcast’s Universal Pictures said it is making its movies available to watch at home while they are still in theaters, a massive change from Hollywood’s long-established business model that could upend the industry if other studios follow suit. The decision comes amid widespread closures of movie theaters as the global coronavirus pandemic spreads.
   
• Chinese e-commerce group JD.com is considering following larger rival Alibaba Group Holding in a market debut in Hong Kong. Securing this deal despite market turmoil would be a victory for the Hong Kong stock exchange, which is eager to become a major venue for Chinese technology stocks.

Subscribe to The Morning Risk Report here.

Follow us on Twitter at @WSJRisk, @kcbroughton, @_MengqiSun and @dgtokar.

Send comments to the Risk & Compliance editor, Jack Hagel, at jack.hagel@wsj.com