Good morning. Jho Low, the businessman-turned-fugitive accused of masterminding a multibillion-dollar fraud involving Malaysia’s sovereign-wealth fund, agreed to forfeit more than $700 million in assets U.S. authorities sought to seize, according to a settlement filed Wednesday.

Mr. Low will give up assets that include real estate, a luxury yacht and a private jet, according to the settlement, which doesn’t resolve the criminal cases against the Malaysian businessman or include any admission of wrongdoing by him. Mr. Low remains a fugitive from the U.S. criminal justice system and is believed to be in China or under Chinese protection elsewhere in the world.

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“This settlement agreement forces Low and his family to relinquish hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains that were intended to be used for the benefit of the Malaysian people, and it sends a signal that the United States will not be a safe haven for the proceeds of corruption,” said Brian Benczkowski, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.

In a statement, Mr. Low said “the agreement does not constitute an admission of guilt, liability or any form of wrongdoing by me or the asset owners. We believe all parties consider this resolution, which is subject to final court approval, to be a successful and satisfactory result.”

Former Unaoil Chiefs Plead Guilty to U.S. Bribery Charges
Former top executives of the Monaco-based Unaoil Group pleaded guilty to foreign bribery charges, three years after a series of articles by an Australian media company implicated the oil-services firm in a world-wide corruption scheme, Risk & Compliance Journal’s Dylan Tokar reports.

Unaoil’s former chief executive, Cyrus Ahsani, and its former chief operations officer, Saman Ahsani, reached plea agreements with U.S. prosecutors in March charging them with conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Justice Department said.

The brothers helped pay millions of dollars in bribes to officials across Africa and the Middle East, according to court documents filed in a federal court in Houston, which were unsealed Wednesday.

Chief investment officers, treasurers and investors appear to be concerned about the U.S.-China trade war and Britain’s exit from the European Union, with 67% of them citing political risk as a key challenge, according to a survey released Wednesday by JPMorgan’s asset management unit. 

More than 90% of survey respondents named money-market funds as the most appropriate form of liquidity management, followed by bank obligations and U.S. government bonds, JPMorgan said.

About 20% of respondents said they have environmental, social and governance-oriented investments, while an additional 25% said they are likely to have these kinds of investments within the next two years. JPMorgan surveyed 346 executives at companies in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Nearly all respondents used cash management and treasury accounting systems for keeping their finances in order, and a majority had debt management and foreign exchange and interest rate risk management systems. Executives in the Asia-Pacific region are more likely to develop in-house solutions, while only 12% of U.S. and 11% of European CIOs and treasurers built their treasury systems in-house.

—Nina Trentmann

• Outcome Health resolved a criminal fraud investigation in Illinois by admitting that from 2012 to 2017, former executives and employees fraudulently sold ads to customers, U.S. prosecutors and the FBI said Wednesday. The health-care advertising company agreed to pay $70 million to resolve the allegations and to cooperate with the Justice Department in its continuing investigation of individuals related to the matter, according to prosecutors.
   
• As the Trump administration pursues a two-track North Korea strategy—combining maximum economic pressure with engagement—a new report contends the global sanctions regime has directly contributed to the deaths of innocent civilians and calls for the removal of restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
   
• Saudi Arabia, Qatar and five other Gulf nations joined the U.S. in imposing sanctions on a financing network controlled by Iran’s military and several men linked to the Tehran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah. Top U.S. Treasury Department officials said the action is the largest ever by the Riyadh-based Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, whose membership also includes the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait.
   
• The Trump administration’s pick to oversee the nation’s derivatives markets plans to take a more industry-friendly approach than some of his Democratic predecessors and wrap up unfinished business. Heath Tarbert, who began a five-year term when he took over the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in July, said he is looking for opportunities to make changes “that we can actually get done in a relatively short period of time.” Among his priorities: Putting in place long-delayed limits on speculation in energy and precious metals.
   
• Facebook said it dismantled a coordinated effort to mislead users led by a Russian businessman whom law-enforcement officials have previously accused of interfering in U.S. elections. Its investigation connected campaigns to entities associated with Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman indicted by the U.S. Justice Department last year for allegedly orchestrating a campaign on Moscow’s behalf to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Last month, the Treasury Department issued fresh sanctions against him over alleged interference in the 2018 midterm vote.
   
• A Texas bankruptcy judge teed up a trial intended to end a long-running dispute between McKinsey and AlixPartners founder Jay Alix, saying the outcome of the trial will be “the ultimate career ender” for one of the two sides. Mr. Alix says McKinsey has repeatedly violated bankruptcy law by failing to disclose conflicts of interest in bankruptcy cases. McKinsey denies those allegations and has defended itself in court, saying Mr. Alix is using the courts to try to drive McKinsey out of the often-lucrative business of aiding troubled companies.
   
• A small Chinese rural bank became the latest lender to spark concern as authorities were forced Wednesday to assure the safety of its deposits following a flurry of withdrawals, and as China’s anticorruption watchdog unveiled an investigation of the bank’s former chairman.

Internal records show a Boeing employee was concerned about the risk of relying on a single sensor to trigger a new flight-control system on the company’s 737 MAX, years before problems with the sensors and the system brought down two of the airliners.

General Electric, meanwhile, said it was raising its cash-flow goals despite a drag from the grounding of the 737 Max. The jet is powered by engines made by GE in partnership with France’s Safran SA. GE reduced its production rate of its Leap engines used in the plane.

• Former Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson testified that the company didn’t mislead investors about how it accounted for climate-change regulations, taking the witness stand in a rare trial airing how businesses manage the risks of future environmental policy.
   
• PG&E isn’t the only California utility facing liability risks because of fires sparked by its equipment. Shares of Edison International fell almost 5% Wednesday, a day after it reported that its Southern California Edison arm likely sparked the 2018 Woolsey Fire, which burned nearly 97,000 acres in suburban Los Angeles and killed three people.
   
• The Interior Department is grounding its entire fleet of aerial drones, one of the largest in the federal government, citing increasing concerns about the national-security risk from Chinese manufacturers, according to a person familiar with the matter.
   
• India’s state-run nuclear power producer said malware was discovered on a computer at its largest facility earlier this year but the computer wasn’t connected to the plant’s operations, which it said were unaffected.
   
• Shares of Tupperware Brands lost more than a third of their value after the company lowered its financial expectations for the year as it continues to struggle with a consumer pullback in its key markets.

• Facebook reached a settlement with the U.K.’s privacy regulator to pay a contested £500,000 ($643,000) fine for allowing political-data firm Cambridge Analytica to improperly access users’ data, but stopped short of admitting wrongdoing. It was the first regulatory penalty against Facebook in a scandal that swelled into a reputational nightmare for Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office said an agreement had been reached with Facebook over the fine but that the social network had “made no admission of liability.” Meanwhile, Facebook reported rising revenue and a steadily growing user base on Wednesday, reflecting how little the mounting pressures facing the company in Washington have affected its core business.
   
• The corporate sector is working to influence how facial-recognition tools are regulated, spooked by local bans on government agencies’ use of the technology and lawmakers’ proposals for nationwide restrictions.

Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot maker PSA Group of France agreed to a nearly $50 billion merger that, if concluded, will mark one of the biggest auto industry consolidation deals in two decades.

Fiat Chrysler and PSA shareholders will each initially own 50% of the new entity, both companies said Thursday in a joint statement, confirming reporting from The Wall Street Journal.

John Elkann, Fiat Chrysler’s chairman, will become chairman of the newly merged company, while Peugeot Chief Executive Carlos Tavares will be CEO with an initial five-year term.

• United Auto Workers Strike Tentative Labor Deal With Ford

Twitter is banning political advertising from its platform, a move that comes as social-media firms have faced scrutiny over promoting messages that potentially contain false or misleading information.

In a series of tweets, Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said he believes political messages should be “earned, not bought.” The new policy will be enforced Nov. 22, he said. Twitter also said it will allow some exceptions, such as ads in support of voter registration.

• Entertainment takes Apple well outside its wheelhouse, and much about its approach to the streaming wars departs from its usual strategy. With TV+, Apple is charging less than competitors and playing the underdog. 

The U.K. Financial Reporting Council is calling upon audit committee chairs and finance directors to boost the quality of their companies’ financial reports, a move that comes on the heels of a review in which the accounting regulator found room for substantial improvement.

In an annual review of corporate reporting released Wednesday, the FRC pointed out continued errors in cash-flow statements and related disclosures in many of the 207 annual and interim reports it analyzed.

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