US manufacturing activity contracted in May — for a third month

LABOR

The state Attorney General’s office fined a high-end Boston restaurant more than $1.8 million for illegally requiring service workers to share pooled tips with managers. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell announced Monday that it had cited the parent company of Japanese sushi restaurant Zuma, and its manager Garrett Ronan, about $1,813,850 in total for the tip pool violations. Some workers will receive up to $50,000 which includes penalties and unpaid wages. Campbell’s office charges that between July 2022 and July 2024, some managers at Zuma participated in a tip pool at the restaurant, which violates state wage laws. Zuma and its parent company did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon. In Massachusetts, tip pooling is only permitted for wait staff, bartenders, and other service employees. Staff with managerial responsibilities cannot share in a tip pool, even if they help serve customers, according to Massachusetts laws. An employee complaint alleging that workers promoted to managerial roles remained a part of the restaurant’s tip pool prompted the investigation, which was handled by the Fair Labor Division at the attorney general’s office. Boston’s Zuma location at the Four Seasons Hotel at One Dalton is one of its London-based parent company Azumi’s 28 permanent and 11 residency locations across the world, according to the company’s website. The fine announced Monday is part of Campbell’s broader push to “protect workers from exploitation, ensure workers are paid the wages they are owed, and hold employers who violate labor and wage laws accountable,” the attorney general’s office said. — STELLA TANNENBAUM

CRYPTO

Circle Internet Group Inc. and its shareholders have increased the size and price of the company’s initial public offering, suggesting strong investor demand for the stock. The stablecoin issuer and some of its backers are now offering 32 million shares at a price range of $27 to $28 a pop, according to a filing Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Circle and the selling shareholders were previously offering 24 million shares at a range of $24 to $26 each. The sale could raise as much as $896 million at the top of the new range, and hand Circle a market capitalization of nearly $6.2 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations. Accounting for employee stock options, restricted share units, and warrants, the company would have a fully diluted value of about $7.2 billion. The IPO has drawn orders for stock in double digit multiples of the shares available, according to people familiar with the matter. The offering is set to close to orders at 4 p.m. New York time on Tuesday, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public. A representative for Circle declined to comment. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

PHILANTHROPY

Africa is set to be the largest beneficiary of the $200 billion that the Gates Foundation plans to give away over the next two decades, cofounder Bill Gates said. “The majority of that funding will be spent on helping you address challenges here in Africa,” he told an African Union gathering in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, according to an emailed statement from his foundation. The organization said last month that it plans to give away the money over 20 years before shutting down in 2045. That implies Gates — currently the fifth-richest person in the world — plans to transfer many billions to his foundation as part of a goal to give away 99 percent of his wealth. He’s currently worth about $175 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

ENERGY

The Trump administration wants to put a 1 million barrel cache of diesel fuel on the market, saying the reserve meant to provide an emergency supply of home heating oil for the Northeast has never been used for its intended purpose. The sale and closure of the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve would generate $100 million to be used for deficit reduction, according to Department of Energy budget details recently made public. The sale of the reserve would require approval by Congress, which gave the Biden administration the green light to sell off and close a 1 million barrel emergency cache of gasoline last year. The 1 million barrels of diesel is equal to roughly a quarter of overall US daily demand, while the US Energy Information Administration estimates that about 4 percent of the nation’s households use heating oil to warm their homes. The diesel fuel reserve, which is housed in commercial storage facilities across the Northeast, was used in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 to provide fuel for emergency responders in New York and New Jersey, as well as in the wake of snow storms that same year, according to the Energy Department. Created under former president Bill Clinton, the reserve is designed to provide Northeast consumers with 10 days of supply, the time required for ships to carry additional heating oil from the Gulf of Mexico to New York Harbor, according to the Energy Department. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

PHARMACEUTICALS

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. will pay BioNTech SE as much as $11.1 billion to license a next-generation cancer drug, as competition intensifies in an area of oncology that seeks to harness the immune system to attack tumors. The German biotech will receive $1.5 billion upfront and $2 billion in installments through 2028, the companies said Monday. BioNTech will also be eligible for as much as $7.6 billion in milestone payments, and the partners will split development and manufacturing costs and profits equally. It’s the latest in a slew of deals as pharmaceutical companies battle for a share of a market currently led by Merck & Co.’s Keytruda, the world’s best-selling drug. Global sales of immuno-oncology treatments could reach $60 billion a year by 2027, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Bristol-Myers has been pumping billions into its pipeline ahead of a patent cliff. Its deal for BioNTech’s compound — dubbed BNT327 — comes weeks after rival Pfizer Inc. agreed to pay 3SBio Inc. as much as $6.1 billion, a record for a Chinese biotech, to license a similar cancer asset. It also marks a major payoff for BioNTech, which licensed BNT327 from Chinese biotech Biotheus in 2023 and later bought the company outright for up to $950 million. — BLOOMBERG NEWS