Good morning. U.S. regulators sued a company that raised $1.7 billion through a cryptocurrency offering that became one of the largest such deals ever. The Securities and Exchange Commission said it obtained a legal order to halt Telegram Group from distributing its crypto asset, known as gram. Telegram, founded by two Russian brothers, developed a messaging app that is popular with cryptocurrency traders and developers.

The SEC’s order seeks to block the company from distributing in the U.S. an asset that regulators say can’t legally be traded in the country. Representatives for Telegram didn’t respond to messages seeking comment. The SEC has taken several recent enforcement actions on cryptocurrency offerings, confronting some of the most successful issuers.

A financial adviser based in Miami pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme that involved paying nearly $3 million in bribes to officials at a state-owned oil company in Ecuador, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Frank Roberto Chatburn Ripalda pleaded guilty in a federal court in Miami to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Mr. Chatburn played a role in promoting violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and bribery laws in Ecuador, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Mr. Chatburn played a central role in setting up a scheme to bribe former officials at Petroecuador, a state-owned and state-controlled oil company, according to prosecutors.

TP ICAP PLC it agreed to pay a £15.4 million ($18.9 million) fine to settle an investigation by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority into trades undertaken between 2008 and 2011.

In a separate statement, the U.K. financial regulator said it fined TP ICAP’s subsidiary Tullett Prebon (Europe) Ltd. for failing to conduct its business with due skill, care and diligence, failing to have adequate risk management systems and for failing to be open and cooperative with the FCA.

President Trump signaled plans to sign an executive order that lets the U.S. impose new sanctions on Turkey following its decision to launch military operations against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in Syria.

The order allows for “very significant” sanctions against any person associated with the government of Turkey, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters Friday, noting that these sanctions haven't been activated and are contingent on Turkey’s actions, including its promise to keep in captivity detainees from the Islamic State terror group.

• The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two South Sudanese businessmen and several of their companies for alleged corruption and urged the government to take immediate action against systemic bribery, kickbacks the administration says fuels a civil war that has killed an estimated 400,000 people. The action came amid a push by U.S. diplomats for the feuding South Sudanese factions to form a power-sharing government by the November 12 deadline agreed to last year as part of the deal to end the conflict.
   
• A congressional committee and the Massachusetts attorney general are investigating whether millions of bot-generated social-media messages about e-cigarettes have been misleading consumers about safety and health issues. House investigators asked five big manufacturers of vaping products in August whether they had used social media bots to market their products. Reynolds, Juul Labs and Japan Tobacco International USA Inc.  said they haven’t. NJOY LLC also hasn’t used bots, according to a person familiar with the matter. Fontem Ventures didn’t respond to requests for comment.
   
• Reynolds submitted an application for some of its Vuse e-cigarettes to the Food and Drug Administration, gaining a head start on other major e-cigarette makers in seeking permission to keep its vaping products on the market.
   
• Company executives who were recently asked to weigh in on existing rules governing how companies account for goodwill in their financial statements say the standards have saddled them with unnecessary costs and are too subjective. That feedback could help the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets U.S. accounting standards for companies, decide whether to propose changes to the current standards on goodwill, which is created when one company acquires another for more than the value of its hard assets.


• A U.S. banking regulator has fined an arm of Citigroup $30 million, saying it violated holding period regulations on foreclosed real estate. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Citibank in Sioux Falls, S.D., repeatedly violated the other real-estate owned statutory holding period because of “deficient processes and controls.” Other real-estate owned refers to property that banks take following foreclosures or other borrower defaults. Citibank violated rules that set a maximum limit on how long banks are allowed to own a property.
   
• Inadequate U.S. safety oversight, combined with Boeing’s failures to properly assess and communicate important design changes, contributed to two fatal 737 MAX crashes, according to the most comprehensive outside review yet of the plane’s approval process. The findings, assembled by a panel of U.S. safety experts and nine foreign aviation regulators, criticized the Federal Aviation Administration on a range of issues, including relying on outdated certification procedures, maintaining insufficient technical staff and failing to fully incorporate human factors in approving automated cockpit systems. Boeing’s board, meanwhile, stripped Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg of his dual role as chairman.
   
• A bankruptcy judge in White Plains, N.Y., on Friday granted a brief legal reprieve to the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, shielding them from answering in court for their alleged role in feeding the nationwide opioid crisis. Judge Robert Drain didn’t grant Purdue’s request for a six-month stay of litigation that would bar the pursuit of the Sacklers for allegedly profiting from misleading sales of the opioid OxyContin. He pushed the drugmaker and protesting states to agree to stand down from court fights until Nov. 6, and talk instead.

• The U.S. and China took an initial step to cement a trade agreement that had been derailed, with Washington saying on Friday it would shelve a planned increase in tariffs on goods imported from China, while Beijing said it would increase purchases of U.S. agricultural products. The two sides left many details to be worked out in the weeks or months ahead. 

• Deadly wildfires fueled by dry, powerful winds burned through Southern California Friday, punctuating a week of power blackouts that have redefined a new normal for fire prevention in the state. Sparked Thursday evening at the northern tip of Los Angeles, the fast-moving Saddleridge Fire scorched 7,500 acres by Friday. 
   
• Deere & Co. is spending billions of dollars annually to buy its own equipment for a leasing program, which lifts sales of new farm tractors and construction machinery but adds financial complexity and weighs on the used-equipment market.

The European Union has identified a series of specific security threats posed by foreign vendors of telecommunications equipment, significantly heightening the bloc’s scrutiny of suppliers like Huawei, according to officials familiar with the matter and a privately circulated risk assessment prepared by European governments.

Previously, the EU released a public report warning that hostile states or state-backed actors posed a security threat to new 5G mobile networks being rolled out around the world. 5G promises faster connection speeds and the ability to link lots of devices—from cars to pacemakers—to the internet.

Separately, in a nonpublic risk analysis that EU member states have recently circulated, governments raise specific security threats posed by telecom-equipment suppliers, particularly from countries with “no democratic and legal restrictions in place.” A draft of the analysis, which hasn’t been previously reported, was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The biggest financial companies that Facebook recruited to launch a cryptocurrency-based payments network have backed out of the project, threatening to derail an ambitious initiative to remake global finance before it ever gets off the ground.

Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and eBay said they were withdrawing from the group of companies that had originally signed on to help launch the libra cryptocurrency, following PayPal, which also dropped out of the Libra Association.

The loss of four of the largest payments companies in the world leaves Facebook without the muscle it assembled to launch libra, a digital currency it hoped would make it a player in e-commerce and global money transfers. The project now mostly hinges on smaller payments companies, telecommunications providers, venture-capital firms, e-commerce merchants and nonprofits.

• Google has barred high-interest consumer loan services from its app store, limiting payday lenders’ access to customers. The move inserted the tech giant into a fight over payday loans, which often carry triple-digit interest rates. Google’s decision raises questions about large corporations influencing markets for legal but controversial products. 
   
• Chief executives are taking vocal stands on issues like gun control, climate change and immigration, but global affairs bring a different complexity and calculation, especially for companies doing business in China.

• SoftBank has prepared a financing package that would give it control of WeWork and further sideline its founder Adam Neumann in exchange for relieving the shared-office startup’s looming cash crunch, according to people familiar with the matter. WeWork is racing to find a way to shore up its financing after its New York parent company We Co. pulled its plans for an initial public offering and Mr. Neumann resigned as chief executive under pressure.
   
• Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina and Cambia Health Solutions said they were dropping plans to combine, after the resignation of the North Carolina insurer’s chief executive. Former Blue Cross of North Carolina CEO Patrick Conway had stepped down amid fallout over an allegedly alcohol-related traffic accident. 
   
• It isn’t easy to find a truly family-friendly company these days. Plenty of employers are promoting parental leave, flexible hours and work-at-home plans. But such claims often amount to a family-friendly facade. Broad changes in the way people work are making it more difficult for employees and their managers to set boundaries on work. People who need time for family care must look beyond corporate image-building for subtler markers of support.

Also...

• Hunter Biden to Resign From Board of Chinese Private-Equity Firm
   

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