Wells Fargo Settles $110M Discrimination Suit
Wells Fargo agreed to a $110M discrimination settlement. The $100M goes to a new mortgage fund, not to the Black homeowners turned away in 2020.
Morning Brief — May 20, 2026. Regulators issued fines and preemption rules that open new legal fights, five FDA leaders exited in a week, and a poisoned developer tool exposed thousands of internal repositories. Compliance teams face simultaneous upheaval across finance, healthcare, and software supply chains.
California regulators issued a first-ever Yotta penalty of $1M, but 18,000 state customers still awaiting Synapse restitution call the fine a rounding error against their missing millions.
FDA's five departing leaders, starting with Makary, exited in a single week; biotech is lobbying for Richard Pazdur as the next commissioner while the White House has not responded.
TeamPCP weaponized a poisoned VS Code extension to pull approximately 3,800 internal GitHub repositories, which now appear listed for sale on criminal forums.
The OCC's May 15 final rules override interest-on-escrow laws across 14 jurisdictions, though circuit splits in the First and Ninth Circuits keep legal challenges alive.
Wells Fargo's $110M discrimination settlement routes $100M into a new mortgage fund — not directly to the Black homeowners who were turned away in 2020.
Wells Fargo agreed to a $110M discrimination settlement. The $100M goes to a new mortgage fund, not to the Black homeowners turned away in 2020.
Eli Lilly paid up to $202M for a preclinical biotech with zero disclosed programs: the platform bet driving its $21B 2026 buying spree.
Apple stopped $2.2B in App Store fraud in 2025, rejected 1.1 billion fake account creations, and now sits at $11.2B blocked over six years.
California's first-ever Yotta penalty is $1M, but the 18,000 California customers still waiting for Synapse restitution call it a rounding error.
BE BOLD's Phase 3 data put a 10-point ACR50 gap between Bimzelx and Skyrizi, the $17.56B drug AbbVie built its post-Humira franchise on.
Immunovant paid $39M in exit costs on batoclimab after two phase 3 TED trial failures, while next-gen IMVT-1402 RA data lifted shares 20%.
SEC closed its FCPA probe of Methode Electronics with no enforcement action, after two subpoenas covering executive pay and hotline tips.
Makary's exit triggered a cascade: four more FDA leaders gone in a week, and biotech wants Richard Pazdur next. The White House hasn't said yes.
TeamPCP breached GitHub via a poisoned VS Code extension, pulling approximately 3,800 internal repos now listed on criminal forums.
OCC's May 15 final rules preempt interest-on-escrow laws across 14 jurisdictions, but circuit splits with the First and Ninth keep the fight open.
Acceleron veterans bet Westlake BioPartners' $30M on ORJ-001, a first-in-class IPF peptide with Phase 1 data in hand and Phase 2 next.
Commure raised $70M at a $7B valuation, with General Catalyst doubling down on AI that automates 85% of hospital billing without human hands.
A $1.4B Kelun bet pays off: Merck's sac-TMT is first in a global Phase 3 to beat chemo on OS and PFS in post-platinum endometrial cancer.
The SEC's 'innovation exemption' would let platforms tokenize Apple shares without issuer consent, and there's no limit on duplicate wrappers.
Colorado's AI Act just shed its discrimination controls; startups dodge impact assessments, but the safe harbor that protected them is gone.
Chairman Atkins just gave every company fighting an SEC enforcement action a new weapon: the right to publicly deny while still settling.
UK Treasury plans to ease ringfencing rules, freeing £80 billion in lending capacity for banks that argued the post-2008 rules cost too much.
A CISA contractor disabled GitHub's secret scanning before publishing AWS GovCloud admin keys and plaintext passwords to a public repository.
NYC's largest public health system had fingerprints and palm prints stolen, covering 1.8M people, with no explanation for why it stored biometrics.
Federal judge fines Cliq $6.5M for violating its 2015 FTC consent order, far below the $52.9M sought, but no receiver and no industry ban.