Good morning. The planned restructuring of Swedish oil refiner Nynas AB shows how some companies are trying to disentangle ownership to free themselves from U.S. sanctions, Risk & Compliance Journal’s Kristin Broughton reports.

Stockholm-based Nynas last week said it would reorganize with the goal of getting out from under U.S. sanctions. The company is co-owned by Petróleos de Venezuela SA, which holds a slight majority of shares, and the Finnish company Neste Oyj.

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Petróleos de Venezuela, or PdVSA, is Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. It is on a U.S. blacklist and at the center of a U.S. campaign to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whose government the U.S. considers corrupt and illegitimate. Nynas has blamed its financial woes on sanctions against PdVSA. Nynas said it has been unable to access basic banking services in recent months despite receiving a key exemption from the U.S. Treasury Department.

The company’s restructuring plan is the latest attempt to reorganize as a result of U.S. sanctions. Two years ago, Swiss manufacturer Sulzer AG changed its ownership structure to escape sanctions against its former majority owner, the Renova Group, a conglomerate with ties to blacklisted Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. Last year, the Treasury Department removed Russian aluminum company Rusal from its sanctions list after a blacklisted billionaire and close ally of President Vladimir Putin, Oleg Deripaska, agreed to divest a majority stake.

• State attorneys general will meet with U.S. Justice Department attorneys to share information on their respective probes of Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit, a step that could eventually lead to both groups joining forces, according to people familiar with the matter. The meeting is seen as the start of a periodic dialogue that could expand into more formal cooperation as the probes continue, the people said.
   
• T-Mobile and Sprint are waiting for a federal judge to rule on whether they can merge, but the companies face another hurdle even if they overcome that legal challenge: the California Public Utilities Commission. The state utilities overseer is the only such body that hasn’t yet blessed the $26 billion deal, and its continuing review threatens to further delay—or even derail—a merger that has dragged on for nearly two years.
   
• Europe’s main banking regulator is trying to clear the path for mergers between the continent’s lenders as the belief grows that scale is the key to reviving the struggling sector, people familiar with the matter said.
   
• Boeing’s new 777X jetliner successfully completed its maiden flight, starting the clock on expected reforms in how regulators approve aircraft for service in the wake of two fatal crashes involving 737 MAX planes.
   
• Fiat Chrysler filed two motions seeking to dismiss a lawsuit brought by General Motors, arguing that GM doesn’t have grounds to bring a racketeering case alleging bribery of union officials.
   
• Switzerland’s financial regulator said an unnamed former bank chief executive must pay 730,000 Swiss francs ($774,150) and banned him from dealing securities for six years over unlawful insider trades made through his wife’s accounts. 
   
• The latest trial over allegations that Bayer’s popular Roundup weedkiller causes cancer was postponed indefinitely at the last minute to allow room for escalating settlement talks to continue.
   
• Owners of Solar Company Admit to Running Ponzi Scheme
• U.K. Financial Regulator Gets Interim Chief Executive

Commerce officials have withdrawn proposed regulations making it harder for U.S. companies to sell to Huawei Technologies from their overseas facilities following objections from the Defense Department as well as the Treasury Department, people familiar with the matter said.

The Pentagon is concerned that if U.S. companies can’t continue to ship to Huawei, they will lose a key source of revenue—depriving them of money for research and development needed to maintain a technological edge, the people said. The semiconductor industry has pressed that argument in talks with government officials.

China was counting on consumers to underpin its already slowing economy. Now, authorities are advising people to stay home, and many residents are too frightened anyway to eat out, shop, see movies or travel as a deadly virus passes person to person.

Anxiety may be spreading faster than the coronavirus that emerged from the central Chinese city of Wuhan in recent weeks. That adds risks to what was already expected to be a very challenging year for the economy in China.

Meanwhile, U.S. businesses with operations in China are taking precautions amid the outbreak, closing restaurants in affected areas and offering free changes or refunds at resort destinations.

• Virus Sparks Soul-Searching Over China’s Wild Animal Trade
• Virus Hits Hong Kong as Economy Is Still Catching Its Breath

• Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have evidence indicating Jeff Bezos’ girlfriend provided text messages to her brother that he then sold to the National Enquirer for its article about the Amazon.com Inc. founder’s affair, according to people familiar with the matter.
   
• A state court in Berlin ruled that some user terms set by Facebook violate consumer-data protection law in the latest example of back-and-forth between companies and courts to define the boundaries of the European Union’s extensive privacy rules. The ruling, from the highest court in the city-state of Berlin, is a regional interpretation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which after nearly two years of being in effect still isn’t uniformly enforced across Europe.

Deutsche Bank said that it has picked Sigmar Gabriel, a former minister in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, to join its board, after the appointment of another nominee fell through.

Mr. Gabriel, from the center-left Social Democratic Party that is a partner to Ms. Merkel’s conservative party in government, served as Germany’s foreign minister between 2017 and 2018, and as minister of economic affairs and environment before that. He was the country’s vice chancellor from 2013 to 2018.

Deutsche Bank is in the midst of a radical overhaul meant to shrink its global investment-banking ambitions and focus more on the German market, following years of tough competition with U.S. peers and legal and compliance woes that made it one of the most troubled banks in the world.

When Walter Wilson, a construction worker from North Carolina, sat down to watch the blockbuster “Avengers: Endgame” on Amazon Prime Video, he ended up seeing something very different: a 2007 documentary, also titled “Endgame,” directed by far-right talk show host Alex Jones.

Mr. Jones’s videos have been banned from many mainstream sites like Apple’s iTunes and Facebook for promoting outlandish conspiracy theories. “Endgame” purported to document a clandestine organization of bankers and politicians bent on establishing a “blueprint for global enslavement.”

Its availability on Amazon’s streaming service highlighted a fact not widely known among subscribers: The e-commerce giant accepts nonprofessional and questionable content to offer a video library that in Amazon’s style can dominate the competition through sheer volume.

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