ECB Goes Big on Rate Hike to Battle Eurozone Inflation

As expected, the ECB hiked interest rates ¾ of a percentage point on Thursday, the latest bold move by a central bank to tackle the persistently high inflation that’s dragging down economic growth around the world - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and Marketplace

DOJ officials told a DC federal judge this week that Google “pays billions of dollars each year to Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and other telecom giants to illegally maintain its spot as the No. 1 search engine,” an aggressive salvo in federal authorities’ antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant that’s set for trial in 2023 - Bloomberg

Accounting giant Ernst & Young will indeed move forward with plans to split into two separate companies, dividing its auditing and consulting businesses in an effort to “help avoid conflicts of interest that can arise between the auditing work and consulting work that EY does for some corporate clients.” The firm expects its partners to begin voting on the proposal this year - NYTimes and WSJ

Mercedes-Benz and e-truck maker Rivian have announced a partnership to build electric vans in Europe, a “rare example of cooperation between a traditional carmaker and a new challenger.” The primary focus on the 50/50 partnership is “to share manufacturing costs,” but neither company put some “expertise” sharing out of the realm of possibility, too - NYTimes and WS

A spate of cryptocurrency investors took aggressive action this week, suing the Treasury Department in federal court in Texas over “government sanctions that bar Americans from Tornado Cash, a popular crypto platform that criminals have used to launder virtual currencies.” Crypto exchange Coinbase is funding the lawsuit, which argues that “the Treasury Department overstepped its legal authority by banning Tornado Cash” - NYTimes and Law360

US mortgage rates are sitting at 5.89%, the highest level since June, marking yet “another blow to the rapidly cooling housing market.” A year ago, average 30-year-fixed rates were hovering below 3% - WSJ and MarketWatch

Second Circuit appellate judges have overturned a lower court decision that allowed a group of Revlon creditors to keep “$504 million they were mistakenly sent in August of 2020” by Citigroup, a huge win for the bank following the surprise decision by SDNY Judge Jesse Furman in February 2021  - Bloomberg and Law360

Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko has made the company’s life problematic since coming forward with allegations in July that the company failed to “protect sensitive user data” and “l[ied] about its security problems”—assertions that have now found their way into the platform’s Delaware litigation with Elon Musk. Zatko did all this despite extracting from Twitter $7 million in June, the amount associated with a settlement between the parties over Zatko’s “lost compensation” after he left the company prematurely - WSJ and NYTimes and Bloomberg

SEC Chair Gary Gensler indicated that he would support moves by Congressional committees to give more authority to the CFTC to regulate cryptocurrencies, a peace offering of sorts “amid an intensifying battle among federal agencies and congressional committees that oversee them over who will regulate crypto” - WSJ and MarketWatch and Law360

A collection of impressive buildings and spaces to address the question of whether architecture can convey values as it seeks to “transform our ways of thinking, our work, our connections to local community” - NYTimes

Have a great weekend,

MDR

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