EY to Pay Record Fine to SEC Over Cheating on Ethics Test

Auditing giant Ernst & Young will pay $100 million to U.S. authorities as part of a deal to resolve claims that “some of its auditors had cheated on ethics exams—and that the firm had done nothing to stop the practice.” That eye-popping fine is the “largest ever imposed” by the SEC against an auditing firm - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch

Thanks to recent moves by the U.S. government shutting down transfers by ruble, Russia kicked off the week by missing a deadline for making bond payments—“signaling its first default on international debt in more than a century, after Western sanctions thwarted the government’s efforts to pay foreign investors” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg

Details on Monday’s G-7 meeting in Germany (dress-code tie optional, it seems) in which the nations discussed details of a potential price cap on Russian oil intended to “restrict Russia’s oil earnings while avoiding taking crude off the market, which would result in raising prices” - NYTimes

Frontier’s move last week to sweeten its deal for Sprit Airlines prompted shareholder advisory firm ISS to reverse its earlier call for Spirit stakeholders to opt for JetBlue over Frontier. ISS is now calling for investors to vote for the merger of the budget carriers that was in the works for months before JetBlue made an unexpected late bid for Spirit - NYTimes

Whiiiich has prompted JetBlue to up its own ante again in an attempt to further muddy the waters before Thursday’s shareholder vote at Spirit - Bloomberg and WSJ

Volkswagen is on the verge of striking a deal with Siemens AG in which the industrial giant would take a minority stake in VW’s Electrify America EV recharging business. Siemens’ investment would “generate additional funding as part of a plan to more than double the number of EV recharging stations Electrify America operates across the U.S. and parts of Canada to 1,800 by 2026” - WSJ

A Swiss federal criminal court has fined Credit Suisse $22 million  “for lax controls that allowed an employee of the bank to help a Bulgarian drug ring launder money” during a stretch from 2007-08 - NYTimes and BBC and WSJ

Can former Treasury Secretary Summers ride a prognostication winning streak into more fortune-telling success? Streetwise admits Summers’ accurate call on inflation but isn’t quite as sure about what comes next - WSJ

News that crypto exchange FTX was interested in buying out Robinhood Markets Inc. helped propel the brokerage’s own shares up dramatically on Monday - WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch

Great . . . but is it real? - MarketWatch and TechCrunch

Fascinating dip into genetics from the Times, which considers CRISPR’s gene-editing technology a decade into its existence - NYTimes

Stay safe,

MDR

The Robins Kaplan Financial Daily Dose features top stories and latest news headlines in financial markets, banking, securities and technology topics.