Good morning. Executives at Airbus raised concerns about fees paid to a number of middlemen working with its helicopter division, led at the time by the company’s current chief executive, according to internal documents related to Airbus’s record $4 billion bribery settlement in January.

In that settlement, U.S., U.K, and French prosecutors alleged Airbus inappropriately paid middlemen to secure orders at its commercial-aviation and its defense and space units. Internal documents submitted to investigators in the probe and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that Airbus executives also raised red flags about payments to middlemen at the helicopter unit.

[Continued below...] 

The division at the time of the internal scrutiny was headed by Guillaume Faury, who took over last year as Airbus’s group chief executive. Suspect helicopter deals were flagged for various reasons, according to the documents.

Some middlemen payments appeared to executives as excessive compared with the underlying helicopter orders involved, according to the documents. Others were flagged, according to the documents, for what executives suspected was improper due diligence or lack of supporting paperwork. Airbus executives made no final determinations about the propriety of the helicopter deals in the documents viewed by the Journal.

Mr. Faury, who headed the helicopter unit from 2013 to 2018, declined to comment. Airbus, citing “legal reasons,” said it couldn’t comment on specific cases covered by the investigation.

U.S. companies aren’t required to tell investors if their executives test positive for the infection that comes from the novel coronavirus, but they may have a strong incentive to do so, securities lawyers tell Risk & Compliance Journal’s Kristin Broughton.

U.S. companies have wide discretion when it comes to disclosing medical information about top executives, lawyers said, and there is no legal requirement compelling companies to do so. Instead, companies are guided by the concept of materiality—that is, whether a reasonable investor would find the information important in making an investment decision, lawyers said. But how companies interpret that concept has varied, at times prompting backlash from investors.

• Click here for the latest on business impacts from the coronavirus pandemic.

The nation’s biggest banks have fewer government examiners roaming their hallways as federal regulators temporarily switch to teleworking to help control the spread of the coronavirus.

The Federal Reserve has instructed its teams of on-site staff at firms like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs Group to work remotely. “As a precaution, examiners for the largest banks have started working fully remotely, consistent with existing arrangements,” a Fed spokesman said to The Wall Street Journal.

Two other regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said they too are embracing telework for their supervisors, although only large U.S. lenders have teams of examiners in residence full time. Regulators said they can effectively oversee banks without an on-site presence.

• The Justice Department is investigating ZTE Corp. for possible bribes of foreign officials, according to people familiar with the matter, which could subject the Chinese telecom giant to a fresh round of criminal penalties amid increasing tensions between the U.S. and China. The investigation comes after the company was found to have violated a 2017 settlement under which it pleaded guilty to dodging U.S. sanctions on Iran.
   
• Bayer has agreed on draft settlement terms with half a dozen law firms representing tens of thousands of plaintiffs alleging that the company’s Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, pushing the litigation closer to a final resolution, according to people familiar with the matter. The six big firms speak on behalf of dozens of firms that represent a large chunk of the plaintiffs suing Bayer, the people said. Bayer is striving to find a way to both keep Roundup on consumer shelves and end litigation that significantly damaged its share price following the loss of three jury trials in the U.S.
   
• Two dozen state attorneys general are trying to end bankruptcy protections for Purdue Pharma’s controlling Sackler family, saying that shielding them from lawsuits during settlement talks sends the wrong message about the justice system.
   
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial will be postponed by two months as Israel takes sweeping steps to confront the spread of the coronavirus. The Jerusalem District Court—where he was charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust—said Sunday that the prime minister’s court date will be moved to May, after Justice Minister Amir Ohana placed the courts under a state of emergency.

World Acceptance Corp. has recorded an accrual of $21.7 million related to an investigation into its former operations in Mexico, the company said in a filling.

The Greenville, S.C., company, which makes personal loans, is being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Securities Exchange Commission for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Mexico. World Acceptance said it has been having ongoing discussions with the SEC "regarding the possible resolution of these matters," but doesn't have a settlement offer from the Department of Justice.

The company's board of directors also has approved a $30 million share-repurchase program, it said.

World Acceptance has said it was first tipped off to possible wrongdoing in Mexico by an anonymous letter, and hired external lawyers and accountants to investigate. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits American companies from bribing foreign officials to further their businesses.

—Matt Grossman

U.S. air-safety officials are investigating potential structural problems affecting hundreds of Boeing 737 jets following an in-flight incident that left a 12-inch rupture in the aluminum skin of a Southwest Airlines plane.

Nobody was hurt on Monday night’s flight, en route from Las Vegas to Boise, Idaho, as the damaged aircraft descended to a safe altitude and the pilots landed at their destination, according to the carrier and the Federal Aviation Administration. The plane’s cabin gradually lost pressure but it stabilized after pilots descended to a lower altitude, and oxygen masks never deployed.

The unusual event has prompted the agency to analyze whether more-frequent inspections should be ordered to check the integrity of the same part of the fuselage on similar 737 models.

• Russia’s oil-market war with Saudi Arabia is part of a strategic campaign to cripple U.S. shale-oil production, a powerful economic tool that increasingly allows Washington to advance its foreign policy agenda, say people briefed on the Kremlin’s policies. Less than two weeks ago, President Vladimir Putin summoned Russian oil companies to a conference room at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport to discuss strategy ahead of a meeting between OPEC and its allies on March 5-6.
   
• The Pentagon’s star-crossed JEDI cloud-computing project has taken yet another turn, raising the potential for further delays. A federal judge has already halted work on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure over allegations of contract irregularities. Now the Pentagon is seeking a halt to court proceedings, saying it wants time to rethink some aspects of the project. The Pentagon awarded the contract, expected to be worth up to $10 billion over a decade, to Microsoft—triggering a lawsuit challenging the decision by rival bidder Amazon.

• Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is stepping down from the company’s board of directors, marking the biggest boardroom departure in the tech industry since the death of longtime rival and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Mr. Gates, who also is vacating his board seat at Berkshire Hathaway, is exiting in order to focus more on his philanthropic efforts. He will continue to serve as a technical adviser to Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella, the software company said.
   
• Philip Morris International named Silke Muenster as its first chief diversity officer who will report directly to Chief Executive Andre Calantzopoulos, effective March 15. Previously, Ms. Muenster held positions at Coca-Cola, Apollinaris & Schweppes and Marbert Kosmetik.

Two years ago, Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey issued 13 tweets emphasizing the need to make conversations on the platform less toxic. Mr. Dorsey said Twitter needed to work with outside researchers and hold itself publicly accountable for its progress.

Now experts working with the company say those efforts have stalled, and some worry that Twitter’s commitment last week to boost growth—made in response to pressure from an activist investor—could further complicate those attempts.

• Amazon is trying to interest the nation’s largest retailers in collaborating on the technology behind cashierless stores. So far, they aren’t sold. Amazon is making some of the software that underpins its “Go” stores available through an organization called Dent, which has had talks with officials at Walmart and Target, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Subscribe to The Morning Risk Report here.

Follow us on Twitter at @WSJRisk, @kcbroughton, @_MengqiSun and @dgtokar.

Send comments to the Risk & Compliance editor, Jack Hagel, at jack.hagel@wsj.com