Good morning. A former Alstom SA executive mounted a direct challenge to the long reach of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on Monday, the first day of a trial in a case that has raised legal questions about who is subject to the foreign bribery law.

During opening arguments at the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, a lawyer for Lawrence Hoskins—a former senior vice president for the French company who was charged in 2013 with helping organize a scheme to bribe Indonesian officials—argued that the FCPA did not apply to the former executive, Risk & Compliance Journal’s Dylan Tokar reports.

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The FCPA applies to companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges and private companies organized under U.S. laws, as well as their shareholders, directors, employees and agents. Other companies or individuals can be found to have violated the statute if they act within the territory of the U.S.

Mr. Hoskins is a British national who worked in suburban Paris and never set foot in the U.S. during his three years at Alstom, the lawyer, Dan Silver of Clifford Chance LLP, told jurors. Lawyers for Mr. Hoskins have disputed prosecutors’ characterization of his role at Alstom and what it means to be an agent under the statute, which doesn’t define the term.

Prosecutors allege that Mr. Hoskins acted as an agent of Alstom Power Inc., a former Alstom subsidiary in Windsor, Conn. Alstom sold its power business to General Electric in 2015, after agreeing to pay $772 million to resolve the FCPA probe.

A bill passed in the U.S. Senate would provide protections to individuals who might have knowledge of potential criminal antitrust violations. 

The Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act of 2019 would provide antiretaliation protection to a tipster that might have been aware of potential criminal misconduct but is not complicit. The whistleblower could be an employee, contractor, subcontractor or agent of an employer, according to the Senate bill.

The bill, which passed the Senate unanimously on Oct. 17, is now in the hands of the U.S. House of Representatives for consideration.

The legislation comes after the Justice Department released a new compliance guidance in July that would give credits to a company in antitrust cases if the company shows that it has a strong compliance program at the time a breach occurs.  

“This would be another avenue for reporting violations,” said Mark Krotoski, a partner at law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, adding that lawmakers have made repeated efforts in the last few years to pass similar legislation.

—Mengqi Sun

The Federal Communications Commission is moving to place another restraint on the U.S. business of Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. by banning U.S. companies receiving federal subsidies from purchasing the Chinese firms’ equipment.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai set the proposal for vote at the agency’s meeting on Nov. 19. It would designate Huawei and ZTE as national security threats and tell U.S. firms not to buy their equipment using money from an $8.5 billion federal fund designed to expand telecommunications service in rural areas.

The FCC is also studying whether to mandate that U.S. companies replace Huawei and ZTE equipment they have already installed. In a commentary for the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Pai called this existing equipment an “unacceptable risk” and said he was beginning a regulatory process aimed at removing it.

• Tacoma, Wash., could soon become one of a handful of U.S. cities to levy high taxes on gun sales, opening a new front in the battle over how much power local governments have to regulate firearms.

Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg is set to tell lawmakers the company made mistakes that contributed to two fatal airplane crashes, as the aerospace giant struggles to regain public trust.

Ahead of Mr. Muilenburg’s appearance this week before two key U.S. House and Senate panels, Boeing released a draft of his planned remarks including an outline of steps Boeing is taking to return its 737 MAX jets to passenger service following the crashes that claimed 346 lives and left the aircraft grounded world-wide for more than eight months.

The first hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation comes exactly a year after the crash of a Lion Air MAX into the Java Sea. It will be Mr. Muilenburg’s first congressional appearance as CEO.

• The FAA Missteps That Kept Boeing’s MAX Aloft

• A year after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia is struggling to draw a diverse mix of global executives to its signature investment conference, in another sign that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious drive to overhaul the kingdom’s economy is hitting headwinds.

• Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s federal regulator took new steps to privatize the mortgage-finance companies on Monday, telling the firms to help lay the groundwork for their own transitions out of an 11-year government conservatorship. In new policy goals, the Federal Housing Finance Agency for the first time released formal objectives calling for Fannie’s and Freddie’s return to the private sector. 
   
• After the financial crisis, the Securities and Exchange Commission decided that enabling ratings firms to publish unsolicited ratings on securities they weren’t hired to analyze would be the best solution to their conflicts of interest. The agency crafted a rule to give them access to deal data to publish such ratings. A decade later, the verdict on that plan is in: The program was a failure.

• Vaporizer products that contain vitamins and essential oils are largely escaping regulatory scrutiny, while being marketed on social media to young people as health products, and in some cases as ways to quit smoking. 
   
• British lawmakers blocked Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan for an early election, but a national ballot this year remained in the cards as opposition parties sought an alternative route to end the Brexit stalemate. The European Union, meanwhile, agreed to delay Brexit until Jan. 31.
   
• Murray Energy, the coal producer led by outspoken Trump administration ally Robert Murray, has filed for chapter 11 protection, a stark example of coal’s diminished role in the U.S. energy sector.

Public company boards primarily focus on the CEO’s on-the-job performance, but directors can’t ignore aspects of the CEO’s personal lives that can have a real impact on the company’s bottom line and stock price.

A CEO’s personal life can influence company culture and ethics and set the tone for corporate behavior, and risky behavior can affect a company’s results and heighten the need for a dependable succession plan.

The tricky part for directors is knowing when to get involved, as well as when to let shareholders know that personal matters might be a problem. Here are guidelines for directors who have to make that tricky call.

• The Business Roundtable’s Model of Capitalism Does Pay Off, Research Suggests

• AT&T struck a truce with an activist investor that had been pressuring the telecom giant to revamp its strategy, and said its chief executive will stay at the helm through next year.
   
• Apollo Global Management is buying an additional 18% stake in insurance company Athene Holding Ltd. as part of a complex deal that will eliminate the private-equity firm’s supervoting power with the insurer.

Retailers and logistics operators facing a tight labor market are ramping up automation at warehouses for the holidays, when online order volumes can surge 10-fold as consumers load up digital shopping carts in the weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

To cope, some businesses are ordering up extra fleets of collaborative robots, or “cobots,” that use cameras, lasers and sensors to navigate warehouse aisles and lead workers to the right shelves or to shuttle bins full of products between workstations. Many are available for lease.

• Juul Labs plans to cut roughly 500 jobs by the end of the year, according to people familiar with the matter, reversing the embattled e-cigarette maker’s rapid staff growth as the company braces for a proposed ban on flavors that make up more than 80% of its U.S. sales.

The Big Four audit and accounting firms in the U.K. are selling less nonaudit work to their audit clients, a finding that comes as some lawmakers are recommending firms separate their audit and consulting businesses to avoid conflicts of interest.

Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2018 generated 8.5% of their total fee income from offering nonaudit work such as consulting to their audit clients. That’s down from 2008, when these kinds of services brought in 17% of total fee income, according to data released Monday by the U.K. Financial Reporting Council.

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