Good morning. Volkswagen worked to strengthen its risk-based compliance program and focused on training to improve workplace culture as it sought to meet its obligations under a plea agreement with U.S. authorities, Kurt Michels, Volkswagen’s chief compliance officer, tells Risk & Compliance Journal’s Mengqi Sun.

Volkswagen—which this week said it wrapped up a three-year supervision program under a U.S.-appointed independent monitor in the wake of its emissions scandal—said that since 2017, it has updated and strengthened its structures and systems in technical development, governance, risk management, compliance and legal functions, among other divisions.

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The efforts included appointing dedicated compliance officers for individual business sections, such as marketing and sales, who know the business and can provide guidance, Mr. Michels said. “The compliance process is structured in alignment with the business activities,” he said.

The company also set up information channels through which employees who need advice regarding compliance, human resources and legal issues can get guidance quickly, Mr. Michels said. The questions collected from the channels also are used to help design future training programs, said Mr. Michels, who joined the car maker in 2017.

The Justice Department joined U.S. securities regulators in examining allegations electric-truck startup Nikola misled investors by making exaggerated claims about its technology, according to people familiar with the matter.

Federal prosecutors are probing allegations Nikola, a maker of electric and hydrogen-powered semi-trucks that listed publicly in June, misrepresented progress it made in developing key technology core to releasing new models, the people said.

The label doesn’t impose any legal restrictions and in itself has no bearing on whether a company can do business in the U.S. Still, legal experts and financial analysts said the sale was notable, because the labeling could be a signal of sanctions to come and could pose reputational risks for the banks that are running the sale and investors who buy the bonds, even though they aren’t breaking any U.S. laws.

• House Democrats issued a sharply worded report revealing new details of how the combination of Boeing design errors, lax government oversight and lack of transparency by the plane maker and regulators set the stage for two fatal 737 MAX crashes. The document calls into question whether the plane maker or the Federal Aviation Administration has fully incorporated essential safety lessons, despite a global grounding of the MAX fleet since March 2019.
   
• A special committee hired by Eastman Kodak’s board found several governance issues at the firm concerning the July announcement of a planned $765 million loan from the U.S. government, but said none of those issues violated the law. 
   
• The Federal Trade Commission is preparing a possible antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, according to people familiar with the matter, in a case that would challenge the company’s dominant position in social media.
   
• Lawmakers sharply criticized Google over its dominance in advertising at a Senate hearing that showcased the arguments likely to play out if the government moves to sue the tech giant for anticompetitive practices.
   
• The World Trade Organization ruled that some U.S. tariffs against China broke international trading rules, a conclusion that exacerbates U.S.-WTO tensions but likely will have no consequence for American tariff policy because the WTO’s appellate system currently doesn’t function.
   
• General Motors is suing a former board member, claiming he leaked confidential information to a rival company and to the United Auto Workers, a move GM says added billions to its labor costs.
   
• Videos showing the younger brother of Mexico’s president accepting cash in 2015 have become the latest challenge to the image of a leader who promised to end corruption.
   
• The U.S. imposed sanctions against a Chinese company it said is responsible for helping to build a military base for Beijing in Cambodia, a new phase in a U.S. effort to pressure firms helping in China’s military expansion around the world.
   
• Federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas to former national security adviser John Bolton’s publisher and literary agent, according to people familiar with the matter, launching a criminal investigation into whether Mr. Bolton mishandled classified information.

China’s ByteDance would retain a majority ownership stake in its TikTok app unit as part of a proposal being reviewed by national-security regulators, with an eye toward settling the high-profile deal by a deadline Sunday, according to a person familiar with the situation.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. reviewed the deal Tuesday but didn’t immediately announce a recommendation. The proposal includes Oracle’s bid to become TikTok’s U.S. technology partner as part of an effort to address the administration’s national-security concerns surrounding the Chinese-owned video-sharing app. The Trump administration contends the app poses a security threat because data on U.S. consumers could be shared with the Chinese government, a concern that TikTok has disputed.

• Microsoft’s Failure to Land TikTok Raises Questions Over What’s Next for CEO Nadella

Ernst & Young, under fire for missing a suspected fraud that blew up German financial technology company Wirecard, said auditors should play a bigger role in detecting such wrongdoing, challenging the accounting industry’s longstanding assertion that its job isn’t to seek out malpractice.

“Whilst the primary responsibility for the prevention and detection of fraud is with the management and supervisory boards, audits should play more of a role in the future to detect material frauds,” Carmine Di Sibio, chairman and chief executive of EY Global, said in a letter sent out to clients and seen by The Wall Street Journal. “Even though we were successful in uncovering the fraud, we regret that it was not uncovered sooner,” he said.

Germany’s audit regulator is investigating EY for its audit of Wirecard, which collapsed after disclosing that $2 billion it had claimed to have on its balance sheet was missing and probably didn’t exist.

• Brokers are peddling counterfeit medical gloves as a shortage of this critical commodity has tripled prices during the pandemic and pinched front-line and other workers as schools and businesses reopen. In recent weeks, companies employing front-line workers have bought fake versions of “nitrile,” or synthetic rubber gloves, sold in boxes labeled “examination grade,” posing potential health risks, according to glove distributors and manufacturers.
   
• After struggling for months to bring down coronavirus infection rates, Western states are now seeing that progress threatened by the wildfires engulfing the region. In Oregon, thousands of people are sleeping on cots—without masks—at evacuation shelters. Smoke from the fires has forced Covid-19 testing sites to close from Los Angeles all the way to northern Washington state. And in Northern California, county officials are pushing the state to let restaurants resume serving food indoors so diners won’t have to eat in the smoke-filled air.
   
• An average of 120 patients a day became infected with the new coronavirus inside U.S. hospitals as the pandemic ebbed from its spring peak and rebounded into the summer, according to previously unpublished federal data.
   
• The United Arab Emirates has become the first country outside China to approve emergency usage of a Chinese Covid-19 vaccine candidate, in a vote of confidence for a state-backed drugmaker racing global rivals to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Keeping staff has become a key focus for companies as they navigate the current economic downturn.

Finance chiefs are safeguarding employee retention programs from broader cost-cutting efforts for fear top-ranking employees might leave. Job losses or salary freezes can result in lower morale and prompt employees to look for a new position despite the uncertainty, executives said.