Good morning. A startup best known for its popular encrypted messaging application is testing the limits of the U.S. government’s crackdown on digital assets, with both sides readying for a court clash in the biggest cryptocurrency case the Securities and Exchange Commission has levied.

Telegram is feuding with the SEC over its $1.7 billion sale of cryptocurrency in 2018. The agency is accusing Telegram of violating investor-protection laws, saying Telegram’s digital coin is actually a security and not a currency. The case, playing out in Manhattan federal court, also tests an unusual, two-part deal structure that Telegram and other companies have used to avoid U.S. oversight.

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The court fight carries high stakes for the SEC, whose enforcement division has mostly chased scammers that fleeced investors with fake crypto projects and startups that raised a few million dollars without following SEC rules. Unlike many of the SEC’s targets, Telegram had the advice of a Wall Street law firm before raising funds, while the investors in its digital-coin sale included the Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as well as executives from Fortress Investment Group and SoftBank Group.

The case has gathered steam in recent weeks, with the SEC and Telegram each filing detailed legal arguments that ask a federal judge to rule in their favor, in lieu of going to trial. A hearing on those motions is scheduled for Feb. 18.

“This is the biggest SEC cryptocurrency case yet,” said Kenneth Herzinger, a partner at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP who handles similar cases. “They have it all out on the line, and they’re pulling out all the stops.”

Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht SA agreed to extend the monitorship and other terms of its plea agreement with the U.S. Justice Department for almost nine months, according to court filings.

Odebrecht pleaded guilty in 2016 to a charge of allegedly conspiring to violate U.S. foreign bribery laws and entered into a plea agreement with the DOJ. As part of the deal, Odebrecht agreed to retain an independent compliance monitor for three years and adopt and implement a compliance and ethics program. The monitorship was set to expire this month.

U.S. prosecutors say the company failed to adopt recommendations made by the monitor and failed to implement a compliance and ethics program designed to prevent and detect violations of certain anticorruption laws. The company now has until Nov. 16 to fulfill obligations under the plea deal. 

Avianca Holdings SA said it retained a law firm to conduct an investigation into its relationship with Airbus, which was charged with making illicit payments to intermediaries to secure contracts for its planes and other products in violation of the U.S.’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and antibribery laws in France and the U.K.

An influential organization that advises companies on risk management is urging corporate boards and senior executives to incorporate risk analyses into high-level decision-making.

The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission issued guidance to help executives better manage enterprisewide risks. The guidance emphasizes the benefit of including risk managers in strategic decisions, such as whether to expand overseas or buy back stock.

• The Justice Department’s chief antitrust enforcement official has recused himself from the department’s investigation into whether Alphabet’s Google is unlawfully suppressing competition. The department said that as the probe progressed, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim came to realize that he needed to recuse himself because of his past work in private practice.
   
• A senior Goldman Sachs executive left the firm after the Federal Reserve punished him for his role in a Malaysian corruption scandal that has tarnished Goldman’s reputation. The Fed on Tuesday said it had permanently barred Andrea Vella from the banking industry for his role in Goldman’s financing of a multibillion-dollar fraud involving 1Malaysia Development Bhd., a sovereign-wealth fund. Mr. Vella left the firm in recent days, a person familiar with the matter said.
   
• The Trump administration says it will allow companies to pursue tariffs against foreign competitors if they can show those rivals have benefited from currency manipulation in their countries. Under a new regulation published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, undervalued currencies would be treated as a subsidy that improperly benefits foreign businesses. That will enable U.S. companies to file a complaint seeking a type of remedy known as a countervailing duty.
   
• Amazon founder Jeff Bezos asked a California judge to throw out a defamation lawsuit against him, saying he didn’t accuse his girlfriend’s brother of leaking nude photos.

Boeing’s 737 MAX crisis is spilling into the deals world. Senior PLC, a British supplier to the U.S. jet maker, is delaying plans to sell an aviation unit amid uncertainty over when the 737 MAX will return to service, according to people familiar with the matter.

Senior said in December that the business, which makes structural components for the jet’s airframe and engine, was up for sale. The company had been considering offers as part of an auction process that was expected to end this month, according to some of the people familiar with the matter. Instead, Senior has pushed back its plan after bids came in below a target price of £450 million ($588 million), according to one of the people.

The reason for the pause is that buyers in some cases have been unable to properly price aerospace assets because of the uncertainty surrounding the 737 MAX, these people said.

Two major U.S. airlines suspended flights to Hong Kong and 10 people on a cruise ship under quarantine in Japan tested positive for the new coronavirus, as more Chinese cities imposed restrictions on movement meant to help contain the fast-spreading pathogen that has killed nearly 500 people.

United Airlines Holdings Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc. said they were halting flights into and out of Hong Kong until Feb. 20, citing a lack of demand. Both airlines and several other global carriers had previously halted service to the Chinese mainland.

• Crisis Could Delay U.S. Boost From Deal With China, Kudlow Says
• Global Stocks Rally as Uncertainty Ebbs
• Chinese Supermarkets Fined, Warned Against Price Gouging
• Bad Luck Hits Macau Casinos With 15-Day Shutdown
• Royal Caribbean Expects Coronavirus to Weigh on China Sales

• Seeking to blunt the dominance by China’s Huawei Technologies, the White House is working with U.S. technology companies to create advanced software for next-generation 5G telecommunications networks. The plan would build on efforts by some U.S. telecom and technology companies to agree on common engineering standards that would allow 5G software developers to run code atop machines that come from nearly any hardware manufacturer. That would reduce, if not eliminate, reliance on Huawei equipment.
   
• Federal prosecutors have unfairly blamed a former Central Intelligence Agency employee for the 2017 disclosure of a trove of CIA hacking tools, the former employee’s lawyer told a federal jury Tuesday. The lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, said the government pinned the 2017 leak on her client, Joshua Adam Schulte, because he was an “easy target”—a software engineer who had “antagonized almost every single person” at the CIA.

Macy’s plans to close 125 department stores over the next three years, an admission that a fifth of its locations cannot thrive as shoppers buy more online and make fewer trips to malls.

The company is also cutting roughly 2,000 corporate jobs, or 10% of corporate and support staff, and closing several offices. It will abandon a dual headquarters in Cincinnati—a structure Macy’s has kept since 1994 when it was still one of the country’s biggest retailers—and put all headquarters roles in New York.

• Best Buy concluded a board-led investigation into Chief Executive Corie Barry and decided to keep her in her role atop the electronics retailer. The company had hired an outside law firm to investigate allegations that Ms. Barry had an inappropriate romantic relationship with a fellow former executive before she took over as CEO last June. Best Buy didn’t disclose the findings of the investigation and a spokesman declined to provide details.
   
• Britain’s largest companies rarely set targets for ethnic diversity on boards and fail to report on the issue, amplifying calls by the U.K.’s audit and accounting regulator to increase efforts to promote ethnic diversity. The research by the Financial Reporting Council and a government-backed committee comes amid increased scrutiny over companies’ reporting, disclosure and business practices following a series of corporate collapses, including the 2018 failure of construction and outsourcing giant Carillion.

New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc. has made a takeover offer for eBay that could value the sprawling online marketplace at more than $30 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Intercontinental Exchange, known as ICE, has approached eBay in the past and did so again recently, the people said. The companies aren’t currently in formal talks and there is no guarantee eBay would agree to a deal. Should there be one, it would be big, given eBay’s market value of more than $28 billion and the premium ICE would likely have to pay.

• Starboard Renews Push on EBay’s Classified Unit

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