Good morning. Heavyweight investors such as BlackRock Inc. were more willing to flex their muscles against companies in the past year, setting the stage for future showdowns over issues from board seats to climate-change disclosure.

BlackRock funds withheld support from 10% of board directors on company shareholder ballots, or more than 6,500 director election proposals, in the year ended in June. That is up from 8.5% in the prior year. In addition, the world’s largest asset manager increased support for shareholder-led proposals. It backed 64% of environmental proposals, up from 11% during the prior year.

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BlackRock cast key votes alongside other big investors in signature shareholder battles that forced companies to make changes. Earlier this year, BlackRock, Vanguard Group and California pensions joined others in backing dissident directors at one of America’s most-prominent companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. It was the culmination of yearslong frustration over the oil major’s handling of shareholder feedback.

“There have been subtle but significant shifts at the largest institutions to be more assertive,” said Rich Fields, who heads Russell Reynolds Associates’ board-effectiveness practice. “The implication is there’s going to be more of this.”

The U.S. Department of Justice has appointed David Last chief of a high-profile unit that investigates and prosecutes companies for paying bribes to public officials overseas.

Mr. Last, who was made acting chief of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit in April, was recently given the job on a permanent basis, a Justice Department spokesman said Thursday.

We’re conducting a survey of compliance professionals about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the reopening of the economy, with findings due to be presented at the WSJ Risk & Compliance Forum on Oct. 12. If you work in a compliance-related role we’d love to hear from you via this survey link​.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has announced new policies to combat sexual harassment, a response to sexual-assault allegations by a female employee that rocked the company and caused widespread public backlash in the past few days.

The steps released by China’s biggest e-commerce company Thursday include establishing a dedicated committee for sexual-harassment prevention, comprising five female senior executives, setting up another team responsible for investigating complaints, and improving its policies on dealing with sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace behavior. They were the result of internal review, discussions and employee feedback, the company said in a memo to employees, which it later released to the public.

• Elisabeth Kimmel, a former media executive from La Jolla, Calif., has agreed to plead guilty for her role in a nationwide college-admissions scandal, heading off a trial that was scheduled to begin next month.
   
• OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma's chapter 11 trial is set to test the limits of bankruptcy powers. 
   
• Criminal organizations and individuals claiming access to Covid-19 vaccines have contacted authorities in dozens of countries hoping they will sign illegitimate contracts for millions of dollars, according to documents and people familiar with the attempts.
   
• Firms that audit private entities essentially police each other, often with no public disclosure. A Wall Street Journal analysis of the system shows that auditors give top grades to one another, hardly ever find fault with the biggest accounting firms and often don’t disclose failures among smaller auditors.

• Bloomberg LP, Centerbridge Partners LP and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are funding a new program to train, mentor and hire students for careers in the financial sector in a push to bring more women and minorities to the industry.
   
• The billionaire boss of WH Group Ltd., the Chinese pork producer that bought Virginia-based Smithfield Foods back in 2013, on Thursday relinquished the top job at the company.
   
• Ryan Cohen rose to become chairman of GameStop Corp. with the verve of an old-school corporate raider. Wielding little more than a minority stake and a sharp tongue, Mr. Cohen pushed out GameStop’s executive team and installed longtime associates on the company’s board. The tactics made the co-founder of online pet store Chewy Inc. a favorite of the individual investors who sent GameStop’s stock on a roller coaster this year; they call him “Papa Cohen.”

As organizations make plans to bring their employees back to the office, they would do well to remember this: Many of those workers are anxious. 

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