Good morning. BlackRock Inc. said Thursday that it has joined Climate Action 100+, the world’s largest group of investors by assets pressuring companies to act on climate change, following criticism that the money manager hasn’t done enough to move the needle.

“We believe evidence of the impact of climate risk on investment portfolios is building rapidly and we are accelerating our engagement with companies on this critical issue,” a BlackRock spokesperson said.

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Launched in 2017, Climate Action 100+ is a group of more than 370 institutional investors, including the money management arms of HSBC Holdings PLC and UBS Group AG , that now represents around $41 trillion in assets thanks to BlackRock’s membership, up from $35 trillion. The group has successfully pressured oil giants Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC to set targets to reduce emissions and disclose more data.

“BlackRock is responding to the demands of its asset owner clients and other groups globally that they take meaningful action to address climate change,” said Fiona Reynolds, member of the Climate Action 100+ Steering Committee and chief executive of the Principles for Responsible Investment.

A Justice Department official who helped design policies to incentivize companies to build compliance programs has left the agency to return to a law firm where he previously worked, Risk & Compliance Journal’s Dylan Tokar reports.

Matt Miner, a deputy assistant attorney general in the department’s criminal division, departed at the end of 2019, said Peter Carr, a department spokesman. Under Mr. Miner, the criminal division revised guidance for prosecutors on how to evaluate programs that companies create to prevent misconduct.

John Cronan, another top criminal division official, will oversee Mr. Miner’s portfolio until a replacement is selected, Mr. Carr said.

The American Academy of Actuaries estimates changes in extreme weather between 1991 and 2016 were responsible for an additional $24 billion of property damage in the U.S. The group said the preliminary results are above what would have been expected for this period, relative to data from a reference period of 1961 to 1990.

Introducing its first model and results of the Actuaries Climate Risk Index, the group said “the publication of the ACRI is not a political statement, but rather provides the Academy’s objective voice about matters related to risks from climate.” The group said it hoped to provide information on the effect of the weather changes for policymakers, actuaries, insurers and others.

—Stephen Nakrosis

Justice Department antitrust enforcers submitted a court filing that detailed instances in which they said Live Nation Entertainment Inc. strong-armed venues into using Ticketmaster, in what would amount to violations of an agreement that allowed the concert giant to merge with the ticketing service 10 years ago.

Originally set to expire this year, the agreement, known as a consent decree, barred Live Nation from forcing venues that wanted to book its tours to use Ticketmaster for those shows, and from retaliating when venues use a ticketing competitor instead. Live Nation is the world’s largest concert promoter, and Ticketmaster is the dominant ticketing service. The potential for abuse of their combined market power led the Justice Department to impose restrictions on how the two divisions could coordinate.

• Boeing Co. released internal communications that revealed how employees persuaded—and in some cases tried to trick—airline and government officials to conclude that flight-simulator training wasn’t necessary for the 737 MAX.
   
• A California court ruled that a state law that could force companies to classify certain contract workers as employees doesn’t apply to trucking companies, bolstering an industry push to carve out an exemption from the law targeting “gig-economy” business models.
   
• President Trump proposed the first comprehensive overhaul of National Environmental Policy Act rules in more than 40 years, saying changes are needed to streamline approval of highways, energy pipelines and other infrastructure projects
   
• Big food-and-drink companies are slowing work on products containing cannabidiol after regulators sounded a note of caution, making space for smaller players to capture more of the budding market.

Reports that one or more missiles may have brought down a Ukraine International Airlines jetliner complicate an already tricky international investigation into the crash in Tehran.

Probes of air accidents involving international flights are frequently awkward as professional crash-site investigators and other technical experts from around the world gather to assess causes of the disaster. International protocol lays down specific guidelines for conducting such investigations, including involving other countries and the manufacturers of key equipment. But those rules aren’t binding and diplomatic tensions makes this case even more complex.

Meanwhile, Lufthansa rerouted a Thursday flight en route to Tehran back to Frankfurt over concerns about operating in the Iranian capital, a spokesman said. Lufthansa now has “a different view of the safety situation in the Tehran airport area,” the spokesman said, declining to disclose the source of its safety assumptions. 

• The damage done to the global economy from heightened trade tensions is likely permanent even in the event growth picks up once some uncertainty lifts, Bank of Canada Gov. Stephen Poloz said Thursday.

Internal auditors should have unrestricted access to a company’s information and its chief executive, according to a new industry code of practice aimed at strengthening corporate governance in the U.K. following a series of high-profile company failures.

The voluntary code, published Wednesday by the Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors, a trade group, lists 38 recommendations to help avoid corporate collapses such as that of U.K. construction company Carillion PLC in 2018.

Internal auditors are typically responsible for companies’ governance, risk management and control processes, as opposed to external auditors, who focus more on companies’ financial reports.

A New Year’s Eve ransomware attack on foreign-currency exchange company Travelex has disrupted cash deliveries from its global network of vaults to major international banks.

Banks in the U.K., including units owned by Barclays PLC, Lloyds Banking Group PLC, as well as Westpac Banking Corp. in Australia said Thursday they were unable to take orders from customers in branches that rely on Travelex to supply cash in foreign currencies. The banks’ online retail foreign-currency exchange services, which are outsourced to Travelex, were also shut off.

• Almost six months after Facebook Inc. agreed to a $5 billion settlement of privacy violations, the issue is anything but settled. The deal is still under review by a federal judge, who has been weighing objections from opponents who believe the deal is inadequate.

• The secret flight from Japan of auto executive Carlos Ghosn has brought a dose of Hollywood drama to the nation’s often predictable criminal-justice system, captivating a public used to high-profile figures charged with crimes bowing tearfully in televised confessions before eventual conviction.
   
• The head of British Airways' parent company is stepping down after 15 years as chief executive, leaving one of the world’s largest airline groups without its architect as it faces a series of challenges.
   
• Party City Holdco Inc. said it has named Todd Vogensen as its finance chief, effective Feb. 3. Mr. Vogensen will take over a post once held by Daniel Sullivan, who resigned as finance chief in early 2019 to serve the same position at Edgewell Personal Care Co.

A U.S. agency that finances exports for American businesses and that conservative Republicans tried to kill has been given a new lease on life, after President Trump changed his position and backed it to compete with China.

Congress quietly renewed the U.S. Export-Import Bank for seven years, bundling its reauthorization into a federal spending package signed into law on Dec. 20, the date the bank’s operating authority and funding for the government were set to expire.

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