Good morning. When U.S. sanctions forced Western banks to call in more than $200 million in loans from Oleg Deripaska ’s automobile manufacturer last year, the Russian tycoon turned to a deep-pocketed backer to bail him out: the Kremlin.

Mr. Deripaska’s car maker GAZ took out a raft of loans from Russian state-controlled banks, including VTB Bank and Sberbank, to pay off his Western creditors. Today, he says, the company has no loans with the West—while its debt to the Russian state has swelled to $1.4 billion. “In the end, there’s a lender of last resort and investor of last resort,” Mr. Deripaska said in an interview.

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Mr. Deripaska’s debt shuffle is part of a shift in the Russian economy that accelerated when the West began to impose sanctions on Russia in 2014 after Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula and launched a covert military operation in eastern Ukraine.

Though some sanctions were meant to split Russia’s economic elite from the Kremlin, they have pushed sanctioned individuals closer to the Russian government—which has become the largest creditor in the country.

Companies with more women on their boards tend to have higher credit ratings, according to a new report from Moody’s Investors Service.

Women hold an average of 28% of board seats at companies that have received the highest-possible credit rating from Moody’s, the New York ratings firm said in its report. Conversely, women hold about 5% of board seats at the lowest-rated companies, the report said.

The relationship between gender diversity scores is a correlation rather than a cause, Moody’s said, noting that there could be several other factors influencing a company’s credit rating, including its number of independent directors. Moody’s analyzed 1,109 companies with outstanding debt as part of its analysis.

—Kristin Broughton

Investors are depending less on advice from proxy advisory firms when it comes to voting on executive pay packages, according to a new report from FTI Consulting.

Receiving a positive recommendation from a proxy advisor has historically been a strong indicator that a company would receive the backing of at least 95% of shareholders, FTI said in its report. But that’s starting to change as large institutional investors conduct their own due diligence, the report said.

FTI looked at companies in the Russell 3000 that received positive recommendations from Institutional Shareholder Services, one of the biggest proxy advisors, to make its point. During the 2019 proxy season, the share of companies that received a positive nod from ISS and won the support of 95% of shareholders fell by 5% from a year earlier, to 1,155, according to the report.

Meanwhile, support for nonbinding say-on-pay resolutions remained constant, with 2.3% of companies in the Russell 3000 failing to obtain the required support from a majority of investors, FTI said.

—Kristin Broughton

The U.S. plans to use expanded counterterrorism powers to target foreign financial institutions that facilitate terrorist financing, leaders of terrorist groups and those participating in terrorist training over the internet, a U.S. Treasury Department senior official said.

“Foreign financial institutions should be on notice that the U.S. government will fully utilize this new authority if they are found to be, in any way, facilitating the malign activities of U.S. designated terrorist groups, their members and their supporters,” Sigal Mandelker, the Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in prepared remarks for a speech Wednesday at the International Institute for Counterterrorism’s annual summit in Israel.

Purdue Pharma LP has secured support from 23 states and thousands of local governments for a multibillion-dollar deal that could enable the drugmaker to resolve much of the opioid litigation it faces through a planned bankruptcy restructuring, according to people familiar with the matter. The OxyContin maker and its owners, the Sackler family, have been fighting some 2,500 lawsuits brought by virtually every state as well as cities, counties, Native American tribes and others accusing the company of helping fuel widespread opioid addiction.

• StarKist Co. has been ordered to pay a $100 million criminal penalty for its role in conspiring to fix prices for canned tuna sold in the U.S. Last year, the company agreed to plead guilty to a felony antitrust charge related to the price fixing. The Justice Department had alleged the company and others worked together to set prices for packaged tuna from 2011 until at least the end of 2013.
   
• Boeing Co. said that the return to service of the 737 MAX jetliner could vary from country to country unless global regulators can agree on a single path to approving software and training changes.
   
• President Trump said the U.S. plans to pull most vaping products from the market, citing growing concerns about health hazards and rising use by teenagers of the trendy alternative to traditional cigarettes. Meanwhile, Juul Labs Inc. is moving abroad to new markets. 
   
• California legislators voted to require schools in the state to allow their athletes to earn endorsement money, setting up a collision with the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which bans compensation for college athletes beyond a scholarship and modest stipend and is threatening to bar California athletes from its competitions.

Also...

• Uber Vows to Fight California Legislation on Gig Economy
• GM Recalls 3.5 Million Trucks, SUVs Over Brake Defect
• Under Wild Skies Sues National Rifle Association

The former No. 2 auditor at KPMG LLP will go to prison for one year and one day for his role in a “steal the exam” scandal that exposed serious weaknesses at one of the Big Four accounting firms.

David Middendorf, the former second-in-command of KPMG’s U.S. audit practice, was convicted for his role in a scheme to steal the names of the firm’s clients whose audits were going to be reviewed by the nation’s accounting regulator.

“As the trial made clear, there were systemic problems at KPMG regarding the use of confidential [regulatory] information,” the government said in a court filing this month. The scheme “could have corrupted KPMG to its core,” prosecutors said.

The pace of retail bankruptcies and store closures in the U.S. has accelerated so far this year compared with 2018, due in part to last year’s lackluster holiday shopping season, a new report finds.

More retail bankruptcy filings are expected in the second half of the year, and bricks-and-mortar stores will continue to close at a higher rate, according to a report released Wednesday by professional services firm BDO USA LLP.

Meanwhile, retail chain Forever 21 Inc. is planning to file for bankruptcy as early as Sunday after facing a cash crunch for months, according to people familiar with the matter. And GameStop Corp. plans to close between 180 and 200 stores globally by the end of its 2019 fiscal year, the company said Tuesday. 

Nissan Motor Co.’s management has yet to give Nissan’s board the complete version of a 170-page report detailing alleged wrongdoing by former Chairman Carlos Ghosn, drawing complaints from some directors, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Directors arrived at a scheduled board meeting this week expecting to get the full report, the result of an investigation dating to last year, and were surprised to receive a five-page summary instead, the people said.

When directors asked why they didn’t receive the full report, they were told it was because the report had gained final internal approval only the day before and there had not been enough time to make copies. As of Wednesday, the directors hadn’t received the full report, the people said.

• Oracle Corp. said one of its chief executives, Mark Hurd, will take a medical leave from the company, leaving Safra Catz as sole CEO at the business-software giant. Mr. Hurd said in a note to employees Wednesday that he requested the move to address health issues. Oracle didn’t say what issues he may be facing.

President Trump said the U.S. will delay by two weeks a planned increase in tariffs on some Chinese imports, a move that could ease chilled relations between the two nations ahead of planned trade talks in Washington next month. Mr. Trump said on Twitter Wednesday that the U.S. will delay a tariff increase that was to go into effect on roughly $250 billion in goods on Oct. 1. He termed the delay a goodwill gesture made at the request of Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, as Oct. 1 marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

The planned tariff increases were to cover largely nonconsumer items—materials businesses use to produce goods—with the levy going from 25% to 30%. The tariff hikes were widely opposed by U.S. business groups as well as farmers, who have suffered heavy losses as China has cut off purchases of American soybeans, corn and other crops. The announcement came as Chinese and American officials plan to hold trade talks in Washington in early October.

• The European Central Bank is likely to launch a fresh wave of loose-money policies Thursday to jolt its stubbornly low inflation rate. But many suspect its primary target is something else: the euro. The central bank is expected to cut interest rates and revive a bond-buying program at President Mario Draghi ’s penultimate meeting.

HSBC Holdings PLC is preparing to put its French retail bank on the sales block in one of its first strategic actions under new interim Chief Executive Noel Quinn, people familiar with the matter said.

The potential disposal of the money-losing French unit is part of a longer-term effort to shed businesses where the bank lacks scale or strategic need, the people said. HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks by assets with a sprawling global footprint, since 2011 has exited more than 100 businesses and reduced the countries in which it operates from 87 to 65.

• Daily-deals company Groupon Inc. is pursuing an acquisition amid discontent among shareholders about the firm’s financial performance and stock price, people familiar with the matter say.

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