Good morning. Justice Department lawyers have improperly used requests for overseas evidence to buy more time to bring some fraud cases, a memo filed with the agency’s internal watchdog alleges.

The document, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, accuses prosecutors of sending such a request to the U.K. when they already had access to similar information. It also says prosecutors delayed following up with their British counterparts, which, according to the author, former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori, showed they didn’t urgently need that information.

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Representatives of the Justice Department and its inspector general declined to comment about the memo.

If the allegations in the memo are determined to be true, they could indicate that the Justice Department has bent the rules in a way that damaged defendants’ rights. Suspects in many federal crimes can’t be charged more than five years after the crime has been committed. Such statutes of limitations were enacted to protect possible defendants from being accused long after a crime, when memories had faded and evidence may have disappeared.

Good morning. Airbus agreed with the U.S. to have its global defense business monitored by an external compliance officer—part of a sweeping €3.6 billion ($4 billion) deal with American, U.K. and French prosecutors that settles alleged bribery and export-control violations against the plane maker.

Airbus disclosed the financial terms of the deal—the largest international settlement over alleged bribery ever—last week. Prosecutors and officials in all three jurisdictions, in detailed allegations released Friday, said the company made illicit payments for years to intermediaries to secure contracts for its planes and other products.

• Michael Sanchez, the brother of Jeff Bezos ’ girlfriend, sued the Amazon founder for defamation, alleging his representatives spread false rumors to news outlets that Mr. Sanchez provided graphic nude photos of Mr. Bezos to the press.
   
• A California judge ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $344 million in a lawsuit in which state officials accused the company of deceptively marketing surgical mesh devices for use in pelvic procedures in women.

• The U.S. Treasury Department removed sanctions on two tanker operators within China’s Cosco Group that were blacklisted last year for allegedly transporting Iranian oil in violation of U.S. prohibitions.

• Insurance mogul Greg Lindberg’s criminal trial on federal bribery charges is set to start Feb. 18, after a federal judge denied motions by Mr. Lindberg and two fellow defendants to dismiss charges against them.
   
• U.K. authorities are investigating a sudden rise in the value of the British pound minutes before the Bank of England on Thursday disclosed its decision to hold the interest rate steady.
   
• Health concerns are sparking restrictions on advertising alcohol on billboards and television, but on social media—which transcends national borders—lax age controls and the use of influencers make booze marketing hard to police. 

China’s isolation amid the coronavirus outbreak, a rare freeze out for such a vital economic center, is rippling across the world. Uncertainty over the virus—which has infected more than 14,500 people—has disrupted world-wide trade and supply chains, depressed asset prices, and forced multinational businesses to make hard decisions with limited information.

The U.S., and governments in Europe, Asia and elsewhere are enforcing new regulations to block visitors from China and screen returning U.S. citizens, while major airlines suspended flights to the country and companies pulled out expatriate executives.

“The calls that I get are: ‘We don’t know what to do. Our employees are panicking,’” says Rachel Conn, an employment attorney in San Francisco at Nixon Peabody LLP. “They’ve never dealt with a situation like this.”

• Coronavirus Outbreak Sends Chinese Markets Tumbling After Holiday 
• Apple Closes Chinese Stores, Corporate Offices Due to Coronavirus
• Honeywell Says Outlook Clouded by MAX Grounding, Coronavirus
• Avian Influenza in China Adds to Economic Concerns 

Every now and then a single company can have a measurable impact on growth. This time it’s Boeing, the nation’s top exporter. In January, Boeing halted production of the troubled 737 MAX, its bestselling jet. The shutdown is likely to reduce U.S. gross domestic product in the first half of the year, economists say.

The Chicago-based aerospace giant has been in a crisis since last March, when regulators ordered airlines to stop flying the 737 MAX after faulty software was implicated in two fatal crashes. Until last month the economic fallout was minimal. While Boeing’s sales tumbled, it continued to produce the jet at a reduced rate at its factory near Seattle, working through a backlog of 4,500 orders.

• U.S.-European Friction Over Wiring Is Latest Complication for MAX

Caucuses in Iowa and New Hampshire present a test for an overhaul in voting security taken since 2016, when, U.S. intelligence agencies say, Russia deployed hackers and internet trolls to interfere in the presidential election. While those intelligence assessments say no votes were tampered with, the agencies warn that Russia, China, Iran and other foreign adversaries are seeking new ways to interfere.

When BlackRock fired two executives last year who had romantic relationships with subordinates, the money-management giant didn’t do it quietly.

The firm ousted both leaders, announcing they broke company rules in memos that were sent to BlackRock’s roughly 16,000 employees. Senior executives and board members discussed the matters and wanted to send a clear message to employees, customers and the public, according to people familiar with the decision.

The public firings reflect a firm determined to show it will police its own workplace. The first of the dismissals took place less than a year after a workplace investigation focused on BlackRock’s Hong Kong office led to the departures of two other employees there, other people with knowledge of the matter said.

• The booming stock market has meant brisk business for financial advisers. Not so at Wells Fargo, which is finding that it is hard to win back the trust it lost when it came to light that branch employees opened perhaps millions of phony accounts without customer knowledge.
   
• Twitter took down an account run by the New Hampshire Republican Party that mimicked a Democratic opponent, highlighting the continuing challenge social-media companies face in determining what is political disinformation and should be taken down.

The top boss used to be more shielded from in-house criticism. With some exceptions, discontented employees tended to grumble among themselves or at a town hall meeting. They let labor leaders do the toughest talking, usually in pursuit of better wages or job security.

But at a time when digital forums like Slack and others are proliferating, workers aren’t just pressing employers to develop a stronger social conscience. They are taking leaders to task for their management style and, in some cases, calling for their jobs.

Two recent workplace sagas highlight the more outspoken scrutiny that some leaders face from employees. At both companies, disgruntled workers led efforts to pressure their chief executives over behavior or decisions they didn’t like.

• Real-estate-industry veteran Sandeep Mathrani is to take over as CEO of WeWork this month, a critical move in the company’s bid to rebuild after a failed initial-public-offering attempt and the departure of Adam Neumann, its co-founder and former chairman and CEO.
   
• PG&E pledged to shake up its board of directors and increase its safety focus in a bid to win California’s support for its bankruptcy exit plan, but obstacles remain in appeasing Gov. Gavin Newsom.
   
• In his 30 years at International Business Machines Corp., IBM incoming Chief Executive Arvind Krishna has witnessed what works in corporate turnarounds and, more recently, what doesn’t. Mr. Krishna, 57 years old, is only the 10th chief executive in IBM’s 108-year history. He takes over a company that has been in transition for almost the entirety of his predecessor Ginni Rometty’s eight-year run in the job.
   
• ViacomCBS has named George Cheeks, a top executive at Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, to replace Joe Ianniello as head of CBS-branded assets at the media giant.
   
• Randy Freer is exiting as chief executive of Hulu as Walt Disney integrates the streaming service more closely into its direct-to-consumer business operations, the company said Friday.

• Companies from Dell Technologies to Delta Air Lines are bringing mental-health professionals into the workplace to offer on-site counseling for employees. One-third of large employers—those with 5,000 or more employees—plan to offer on-site behavioral-health counseling this year, up from a quarter of those companies in 2019 and less than one-fifth in 2018, according to a survey from the Business Group on Health.
   
• IKEA wants to bring the supply-chain precision behind its flat-pack furniture business to the way it manages meatballs and lingonberry jam. The Swedish furniture giant is starting a digital overhaul of its food division aimed at shaving costs, reducing waste and using technology to connect hundreds of store operations that now use paper and spreadsheets to track the flow of food products.

For a startup, a transformative innovation is all upside, an opportunity to take-on established companies with new products that offer significantly better capabilities and/or lower costs. But, it’s different for an established company. Already consumed with managing their existing operations, they may see a new transformative innovation as more of a threat or distraction than an opportunity.

Consulting firm Innosight argues that the right response by an established company to such a disruptive change is a two-track dual transformation process: reposition the existing business to make it more resilient and better able to evolve into the future; and embrace the disruptive change to create tomorrow’s new growth business.

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