Good morning. A U.S. Senate committee held a hearing Tuesday on President Biden’s nominee for the top sanctions and counterterrorist finance role at the U.S. Treasury Department, a position that has been vacant since 2019 and that Congress isn’t expected to vote on until the Senate returns in July, Risk & Compliance Journal's Mengqi Sun reports. 

President Biden in May nominated Brian Nelson as the Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, a position that leads the department’s development and implementation of the U.S.’s counterterrorist financing and sanctions policy.

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The hearing on the nomination comes as the role has remained open for more than a year and half. Sigal Mandelker, who held the position under the Trump administration and oversaw an expansion of the use of sanctions in that role, left for the private sector in October 2019. Another Trump administration nomination for the post was withdrawn last year.

Tuesday’s hearing, which also included the nomination of Elizabeth Rosenberg for the role of assistant secretary for terrorism financing at the Treasury, is for posts critical to President Biden’s foreign policy platform. This includes controversial plans to lift major portions of the Iran sanctions program if Tehran agrees to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal. 

The Federal Trade Commission will be the agency to review Amazon.com Inc.’s proposed acquisition of Hollywood studio MGM, according to people familiar with the matter, just as the commission gets a new chairwoman who has been critical of the online giant’s expansion.

Amazon last month announced its deal for MGM, which would boost its Prime Video streaming platform in a market that includes rivals such as Netflix Inc. and Walt Disney Co. MGM has a library of more than 4,000 films, including the James Bond franchise, and a television catalog that includes “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Vikings.”

• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first new Alzheimer’s drug in decades over the objection of agency statisticians who said there was insufficient evidence to support approval, according to newly released internal memos. In the internal memos released Tuesday, FDA officials discussed whether to approve the drug from Biogen Inc. over objections from the agency’s drug statistics office.
   
• Tens of thousands of foreigners have bought their way to U.S. permanent residency through a federal investor visa program. But this popular shortcut to the American dream is now turning into a nightmare for some amid a rise in lawsuits and fraud cases. The Covid-19 pandemic has made matters worse.
   
• Apple Inc. is stepping up its fight to maintain tight controls over which apps can be installed onto customers’ iPhones, as political pressure grows in Washington, D.C. and Brussels to upend those restrictions.

Politicians and public-health officials in the U.S. are expressing concern about the spread inside the country of the so-called Delta variant of the coronavirus designated by the World Health Organization as a global “variant of concern.”

The variant, also known as B.1.617.2, is the most worrying of a lineage of the virus that was first identified in India in late 2020 and has spread to almost 70 countries, including the U.S.

The version of the virus played a significant role in a record-setting surge of infections that overwhelmed India’s healthcare system. It has become the dominant variant in the U.K., accounting for 96% of samples sent for genetic analysis in the final week of May.

• Delta Covid-19 Variant Could Be Dominant in U.S. in Two to Three Weeks, Study Says

• Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is on Capitol Hill Tuesday to testify before a House subcommittee overseeing efforts to guide the economy through the Covid-19 pandemic. The hearing aims to focus on lessons learned by the Fed, which rolled out a blitz of extraordinary lending programs early in the pandemic. He also played down the threat posed by inflation.
   
• Federal authorities have seized at U.S. airports unauthorized versions of the Covid-19 treatment remdesivir destined for distribution in Mexico, the latest effort by the government to root out criminal activity related to the pandemic.

Eyck Freymann, an Oxford University doctoral student, was surprised to get a notice from LinkedIn this month telling him his account had been blocked in China. The “Experience” section of his profile, which detailed his career history, contained “prohibited” content, he was informed.

The social-networking site owned by Microsoft Corp. didn’t explain more, but Mr. Freymann said he thought it was because he had included the words “Tiananmen Square massacre” in the entry for his two-year stint as a research assistant for a book in 2015.

The academic is one of a spate of LinkedIn users whose profiles have been blocked in recent weeks. The actions underscore the challenge for foreign companies in China: acquiesce to Chinese government demands or risk getting shut out of its giant market. But enforcing Chinese censorship also risks a backlash from users and politicians in the West who see companies taking part in the suppression of free speech.

The U.S. warehouse market is starting to look like the red-hot housing sector, as companies jockey for scarce distribution space to meet surging e-commerce demand.

The competition is driving up industrial rents as retailers and logistics providers race to move goods closer to population centers, with some engaging in bidding wars for the most coveted sites. Businesses are pushing to deliver online orders faster to the homes of digital shoppers and responding to growing consumer spending that is helping drive an economic rebound.

Americans took out more mortgages than ever before in 2020. Most of them didn’t come from banks.

Nonbank mortgage lenders in the U.S. issued 68.1% of all mortgages originated in 2020, up from 58.9% in 2019, according to industry research firm Inside Mortgage Finance. That is their highest market share on record and their biggest yearly gain since 2014.

Nonbank mortgage lenders have been gaining ground on banks for the past decade. These lenders, which don’t take deposits or offer other banking services, have made up more than half of the market since 2016. Seven of the 10 biggest U.S. mortgage lenders were nonbanks at the end of 2020, according to the research firm.

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

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