Good morning. Campbell’s said it fired the executive allegedly caught on audio disparaging the company’s products.

• The allegations: The food company has been at the center of a controversy in recent days after a former employee leaked a tape of the executive. In the recording, vice president of information technology Martin Bally made racist comments about Indian co-workers, calling them “idiots,” during a meeting. He also said Campbell’s made “highly processed food” for “poor people.”
   
• The response: Campbell’s said Wednesday that, after a review, it believed the voice on the recording was Bally’s. He was no longer employed at the company as of Tuesday. “The comments were vulgar, offensive and false, and we apologize for the hurt they have caused,” the company said. Bally didn’t immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday.
   
• Where the accusations came from: The former employee who leaked the tape, cybersecurity analyst Robert Garza, sued Campbell’s and Bally last week. Garza alleged that he was terminated earlier this year weeks after reporting Bally’s comments to his manager, whom he also sued.
   
• Background: Campbell’s, based in Camden, N.J., is best known for its canned-soup offerings including its popular chicken noodle soup. The company has defended the quality of its chicken in recent days after the alleged recording of Bally circulated online.

Join us on Dec. 2 for a webinar examining how bank compliance should incorporate the national security priorities of the Trump administration.

Speakers are Alessio Evangelista, partner at Skadden Arps and a former enforcement director at FinCEN; and David Schwartz, president and chief executive of the Financial & International Business Association. You can register here.

Fresh scandal forces Lloyd’s of London to confront controversial past.

Lloyd’s of London, the world’s biggest insurance marketplace, is no longer a bastion of white, male privilege. Or so the white men running it say. A reputational crisis is putting the iconic British institution under pressure to prove it has changed.

The impact. The alleged misconduct, previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, is reverberating worldwide. The influence of Lloyd’s reaches far beyond its steel-and-glass-sheathed London office, with it insuring everything from planes to cyberattacks in more than 200 countries. Lloyd’s alumni fill C-suites in the U.S. and beyond.

The context. The uphill nature of Lloyd’s battle to stamp out sexism and racism reflects endemic issues in the wider insurance world, according to people close to Lloyd’s.

Scientology-linked startup Dream Exchange loses bid for SEC license.

The Securities and Exchange Commission rejected Dream Exchange’s application for a license to run a stock exchange two months after The Wall Street Journal reported on the startup’s undisclosed financial ties to the Church of Scientology.

Why? The SEC said its decision was based on nonpublic information obtained from an investigation into whether there had been violations of securities laws, as well as “press reports raising questions about the potential misuse of funds.”

• A top British financial regulator said it is “open for business” when it comes to cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, reports Risk Journal’s Richard Vanderford, marking the U.K.’s pivot toward the industry following a Trump administration embrace of digital assets.
   
• Taiwanese authorities are investigating Wei-Jen Lo, an Intel executive, for allegedly transferring national security-related technology.
   
• Lowe’s will pay $12.5 million to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department to settle allegations the retailer violated paint safety standards, Risk Journal's Clara Hudson reports.
   
• Gaming groups are pushing President Trump’s nominee to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to clarify his stance on whether the agency should ban prediction markets companies from offering sports-related betting, Risk Journal’s Mengqi Sun reports.
   
• The U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office released updated guidance for how it evaluates corporate compliance programs when determining whether to prosecute a business, according to Risk Journal’s Max Fillion.
   
• European and American regulators on Friday mandated that Airbus make fixes to its jets, saying its jets could be temporarily grounded if airlines don’t make certain software or hardware updates.
   
• French authorities raided Sanofi's Paris headquarters Tuesday as part of a tax fraud investigation.

Where Trump sees deals, Russia and China see a chance to disrupt U.S. alliances.

U.S. adversaries are using President Trump’s eagerness to strike deals as a chance to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its allies and undermine the Washington-led security order that has for years held them in check.

Tradeoffs sought. In Europe, Russia is seeking to exploit Trump’s desire to halt the war in Ukraine and strike business deals with Moscow by shaping a peace plan that meets many of its strategic objectives, including winning chunks of Ukrainian territory and closing off any hope Kyiv had of joining NATO. In Asia, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is attempting to steer Trump toward abandoning Taiwan in exchange for an expansive U.S.-China trade accord, a key Trump goal.

• Make Money Not War: Trump’s Real Plan for Peace in Ukraine
• After ‘Productive’ Meeting With Ukrainian Negotiators in Florida, U.S. Officials Head to Russia

Why Russia and China are sitting out Venezuela’s clash with Trump.

For two decades, Venezuela cultivated anti-American allies across the globe, from Russia and China to Cuba and Iran, in the hope of forming a new world order that could stand up to Washington. It isn’t working.

Russia, China, Cuba, Iran and other anti-American powers are offering little more than words of support for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as he faces a U.S. military buildup that President Trump has said is aimed at forcing his ouster. Like Iran when it came under military attack from Israel and the U.S., Venezuela is finding its authoritarian allies on the sidelines of conflict.

• Chinese leader Xi Jinping expressed anger to President Trump regarding Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments on a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan. Trump advised Takaichi to temper her tone on Taiwan’s sovereignty to avoid jeopardizing a U.S.-China trade detente, people briefed on the matter said.
   
• Explosions rocked two tankers sanctioned for carrying Russian oil, the latest in a spate of blasts on such vessels, sparking a rescue operation off Turkey’s Black Sea coast.
   
• Citibank’s launch of its Strata Elite credit card this summer marked its return to a sizzling-hot premium market. Behind the scenes, the rollout was marred by a headache.
   
• A conservative candidate held a narrow lead in Honduras’ presidential race that had been thrown into disarray in its final days due to the surprise endorsement of President Trump.
   
• A promising U.S. healthcare startup said it is battling for its survival against its Chinese investor in a letter to in a letter to  the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.
   
• New York City Comptroller Brad Lander has asked the trustees of three large city pension funds to pull $42 billion from index funds managed by BlackRock due to unmet climate expectations.
   
• Stocks and cryptocurrencies linked to President Trump are in a deep slump, leaving some of the president’s biggest fans with steep losses.

Asahi takes earnings hit after cyberattack, flags potential data leak.

Asahi Group said its Japan business took a hit from a recent cyberattack that may have compromised the personal information of nearly two million people.

The company behind Japan’s most popular beer on Thursday said the system disruption caused by the cyberattack had dragged core operating profit from its Japan and East Asia segment. The food-and-beverage giant said personal information of 1.9 million individuals may have also been leaked.

• A 10-hour outage at CME Group’s data center in Illinois halted trading in key financial contracts due to cooling system failure.

• Congress launched inquiries and lawmakers from both parties raised the possibility of war crimes after a report that the U.S. targeted survivors of a strike on an alleged drug boat.
   
• The U.S. military has turned its attention southward, and the defense industry is lining up to sell it the tools for a different kind of war.
   
• Western companies in China face increased competition, leading to reduced profit margins and a need for strategy adjustments.
   
• Scotland plans to issue its first bond in over three hundred years, following a disastrous attempt in 1695 to establish a colony in Panama.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Send tips to our reporters Max Fillion at max.fillion@dowjones.com, Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com and Richard Vanderford at richard.vanderford@wsj.com.

You can also reach us by replying to any newsletter, or by emailing our editor David Smagalla at david.smagalla@wsj.com.