Top Stories — Monday, April 20, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Sandwich chain Jersey Mike's confidentially files for IPO — CNBC
- A Decisive Win Raises Bulgarians’ Hopes for Change — nyt News
- Eli Lilly agrees to acquire cancer drug maker Kelonia in deal worth up to $7 billion — CNBC
Sandwich chain Jersey Mike's confidentially files for IPO
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/20/2026, 8:03:56 PM
Jersey Mike's has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, the company said on Monday.
The announcement comes more than a year after Blackstone bought a majority stake in the sandwich chain in a deal that reportedly valued Jersey Mike's at roughly $8 billion.
After the Blackstone deal closed, Jersey Mike's tapped former Wingstop CEO Charlie Morrison to helm the company. Morrison led the chicken wing chain for a decade, ushering it through its own IPO and a period of historic growth.
With more than 3,000 locations nationwide, Jersey Mike's is the second-largest hoagie sandwich chain in the U.S., trailing only Subway.
Jersey Mike's reported revenue of $309.8 million in 2025, up 10.6% from the prior year, according to franchise disclosure documents. The chain also reported net income of $183.6 million in 2025, down from the prior year's net income of $238.8 million.
Founder Peter Cancro began working at a Jersey Shore sandwich shop at age 14 in 1971; four years later, he pulled together enough money to buy Mike's Subs. Cancro later changed the name and began franchising the chain. Until the sale to Blackstone, he was the outright owner of Jersey Mike's.
The confidential filing is the first step for Jersey Mike's to be publicly traded. If it goes public, it will mark the first restaurant IPO since Black Rock Coffee Bar's offering in September.
The market for initial public offerings has been tepid, although that could change this year. Market volatility, economic uncertainty and recent poor performance among IPO stocks has led to a backlog of listings. However, several blockbuster IPOs, like the SpaceX offering that could value the company at $1 trillion, are anticipated in the coming months.
Correction: Jersey Mike's reported revenue of $309.8 million in 2025. A previous version of this article misstated the amount.
A Decisive Win Raises Bulgarians’ Hopes for Change
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/20/2026, 7:46:56 PM
A runaway victory in Bulgaria’s election by a former president, Rumen Radev, has given the country its best chance in recent history to do away with the stranglehold of corruption and the weak, unstable governments that have plagued the country for decades.
The size of the win in Sunday’s voting by his coalition, Progressive Bulgaria, was much bigger than projected and will allow Mr. Radev to form a government quickly, with his coalition having secured a majority of seats in Parliament, official results showed Monday.
The election for a new Parliament came four months after mass protests over economic mismanagement and corruption filled the streets of Sofia, the capital, and forced the previous government to resign. The protesters largely got what they wanted in this election, delivering a drubbing to the parties that previously held power.
The strong result offers Mr. Radev the opportunity, if he combines efforts with a liberal alliance of parties that came in third, to enact structural and constitutional reforms to tackle the corruption that has stymied Bulgaria’s institutions.
Yet many Bulgarians, weary of promises from previous governments to tackle corruption, were withholding judgment. “Let’s see what he does,” said Anna Budakov, 23, a prominent activist and candidate for the We Continue the Change alliance.
Official results from the Central Election Commission showed that Progressive Bulgaria won with more than 44 percent of the vote and 130 seats in Parliament. An alliance of liberal parties, We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria, came in third, with 12 percent and 37 seats.
Mr. Radev’s surge to power, after forming his coalition only one month ago, reflected the anger of voters against the political partnership that had dominated politics for the last decade.
His rivals — a former prime minister, Boyko Borissov, and a former media mogul turned politician, Delyan Peevski — received a reduced vote at the polls. Both men have been accused by their opponents of overseeing a failing economy amid rampant corruption.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party, the successor of the old Communist Party, failed to reach the 4 percent threshold and for the first time since Soviet times will not be represented in Parliament. An ultranationalist pro-Russian party, Revival, did win a place in Parliament.
The extent of Mr. Radev’s win has concerned some in Bulgaria and beyond, because of his perceived pro-Russian and Euroskeptic stance on many issues.
A 62-year-old former fighter pilot and former Commander of the Bulgarian Air Force, Mr. Radev has supported dialogue with Russia and a continuation of energy projects with the country. He opposed military assistance to Ukraine.
President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia was among the first to congratulate him on his win. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said Moscow was encouraged by Mr. Radev’s victory and his call for dialogue with Russia.
But some analysts said Mr. Radev’s past positioning on Russia and during the campaign had been a calculated balancing act to draw support from voters from all sides. Analysts also said that in the largely ceremonial position as president, to which he was elected twice, he did not have make executive decisions. Once he holds executive power, he will have to clarify his positions.
Vessela Tcherneva, deputy director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that Mr. Radev would be unlikely to seek to be disruptive in relations within the European Union, as did Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, who was himself soundly defeated in elections on April 12.
“After Orban’s defeat in the Hungarian elections, Radev would have no anchor around the European Council table to present a blocking factor,” she said in a statement. “In the coming economic crisis, he would not risk the freezing of E.U. funds.”
Maria Simeonova of the Sofia bureau of the European Council on Foreign Relations added that Mr. Radev’s Euroskeptic comments were aimed more for people at home.
“His criticism, particularly regarding financial and military support for Ukraine or sanctions against Russia, will be aimed primarily at the domestic audience,” she said.
In his first comments to journalists Sunday night, Mr. Radev showed his ability to be pro-Europe while making a sideswipe to register some skepticism.
“Bulgaria will pay efforts to continue its European part,” Mr. Radev said in English, while adding, “Europe has fallen a victim to its own ambition to be a moral leader in a world without results.”
His critics among opposition politicians said the test would be in his actions.
“He is the uncontested winner — he can form a government on his own and do what he wants,” said Velislav Velichkov, founder of the Justice for All Initiative, a nongovernmental group working against corruption in the judiciary in Bulgaria.
Mr. Velichkov, who has long campaigned for judicial reform and ran for Parliament with the We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria alliance, said there was a possibility the two groups could combine to bring far-reaching reforms, particularly to the judiciary.
He hoped those conversations could “start in coming days,” he said, “so that we can fast-track whatever we are planning to do in terms of reform.”
Boryana Dzhambazova contributed reporting.
Carlotta Gall is a senior correspondent, covering the war in Ukraine.
Read the full story at nyt News.
Eli Lilly agrees to acquire cancer drug maker Kelonia in deal worth up to $7 billion
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/20/2026, 7:31:46 PM
Eli Lilly will acquire biotech company Kelonia Therapeutics in a deal worth up to $7 billion, the company said Monday.
Lilly will pay $3.25 billion upfront, and the remaining payments are contingent upon clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones, it said. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026.
Kelonia is developing technology to reprogram patients' T-cells inside the body so those cells can attack cancer, called in vivo CAR-T. Current treatments require that work to be done outside the body, or ex vivo, a process that involves harvesting cells, engineering them in a lab and then reintroducing them. While logistically intensive, the procedure has been successful for blood cancers like multiple myeloma.
"It's an intravenously delivered therapy, one time," Jacob Van Naarden, president of Lilly oncology and head of corporate business development, said in an interview. "It targets your body's T-cells, transforms them into attacking the cancer in the body, and requires no preconditioning at all."
Johnson & Johnson's CAR-T treatment for multiple myeloma, Carvykti, accounted for $1.89 billion in sales last year. Gilead recently acquired partner Arcellx and its rival to J&J's drug, called anito-cel, for $7.8 billion.
Ex-vivo CAR-T involves waiting weeks for a patient's blood cells to be engineered. It requires patients to receive chemotherapy to clear out old cells and make room for the engineered ones, a process known as pre-conditioning. The procedure has thus far been limited to mostly academic medical centers that have expertise in the process.
Lilly's Van Naarden called Kelonia's data "nothing short of remarkable." He said he recognizes the competition but sees the convenience of a one-time infusion as an attractive option. Outside of multiple myeloma, Lilly plans to use Kelonia's technology to treat other blood cancers, and possibly solid tumors.
"We're going to be a player in hematology," he said. "It's nice to have another medicine to go to those doctors with a medicine that can be used broadly, that isn't relegated to academic medical centers who can do ex-vivo personalized cell therapy."
Lilly has been on a dealmaking spree this year, announcing several acquisitions like sleep disorder drug developer Centessa Pharmaceuticals and cell therapy company Orna Therapeutics. Van Naarden said the deals are all part of Lilly's plan to grow beyond the GLP-1 drugs for obesity and diabetes that Lilly is best known for.
"Right now, Lilly is thought of as a weight loss company, and that's a very large part of our business," Van Naarden said. "But over time, the goal, very intentionally, is to use the financial strength that the incretin and the weight loss business is providing us to help diversify the business into the other therapeutic areas even more so."
Some of Lilly's recent deals have come with bigger price tags and later-stage experimental drugs than Lilly has typically bought up. The company has historically focused on small, early-stage deals for unproven science.
Van Naarden said the company has made a slight shift in strategy to keep doing the high-volume, early-stage dealmaking as well as later-stage deals for experimental drugs with more clinical data.
"The challenge with the high-volume, early-stage deal making is most of that will turn into nothing. We know that, and that's OK. That's the nature of those bets," Van Naarden said. "There's another side of the spectrum, where you can spend a little bit more money, you can still create value through the deals in the long term, but they have some de-risking. You've seen clinical data that shows these things work, and then you feel much better about having a tangible medicine at the end of the journey. Those things, of course, cost more."
Even factoring in the deals Lilly has already done, when asked if there could be more ahead, Van Naarden said, "We don't feel constrained."
For complete details, visit the original sources linked above.
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