Good morning. Wells Fargo is struggling with its regulatory obligation to monitor financial crime, the latest challenge in the bank’s yearslong effort to recover from a series of scandals.

Regulators have issued the bank formal orders to be better at catching criminals who may be using its accounts or products, according to people with knowledge of the matter. At the same time, the bank is facing a lawsuit claiming it allowed an alleged $490 million Ponzi scheme to operate.

A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said the bank disputes the lawsuit’s allegations and has cooperated with law-enforcement officials in their investigation.

• Broad focus: The regulators are focused on the bank’s broad consumer-watching systems, not any specific client or event. They have privately rebuked Wells Fargo multiple times since early last year for improper oversight of criminal activity in its consumer bank, the people said.
   
• Rebuilding phase: Wells Fargo is rebuilding its sprawling risk and control apparatus so it can better prevent and catch problems. The 2016 revelation that employees created millions of fake customer accounts to meet sales goals led to heightened scrutiny in every corner of the bank.

Morgan Stanley agrees to pay $6.5 million fine over compromised customer information.

Morgan Stanley agreed to pay a fine of $6.5 million following an agreement with a coalition of attorneys general over the financial services provider compromising millions of customers’ personal information.

Morgan Stanley, doing business as Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, failed to decommission its computers and erase unencrypted data in certain computer devices that were later auctioned while still containing consumers’ personal information, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James.

U.S. sanctions shipping companies for allegedly evading Russia oil price cap.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on additional shipping companies and vessels that it says evaded a cap meant to cut Russia’s oil revenue.

The Treasury Department on Thursday said it placed sanctions on three companies based in the United Arab Emirates: Kazan Shipping, Progress Shipping and Gallion Navigation. Vessels owned by those companies transported Russian crude without respecting a $60-a-barrel price cap imposed by the U.S. and allies, the department said.

• A lawsuit alleging that real-estate software company RealPage illegally fixes rents at millions of apartments should go forward, the U.S. Justice Department said in a court filing.
   
• FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg, known for an explosive temper, ignored bad behavior in the workplace, current and former officials said. Three Republican senators called for him to resign, a move that follows a Wall Street Journal investigation into misconduct at the agency.

Russia arrests two executives at seized Carlsberg unit.

Russian authorities have arrested two senior employees at brewing giant Carlsberg’s local subsidiary, the latest sign of tension between the Kremlin and Western businesses amid the war in Ukraine.

The two employees are accused of fraudulently transferring the rights to the Baltika beer brand in several countries to entities associated with Carlsberg, according to the official Telegram channel of the St. Petersburg court press service. Carlsberg said Thursday that the allegations against the men were fake.

The global fight against inflation has turned a corner.

Inflation is falling faster than expected across advanced economies, marking a turning point in central banks’ two-year battle against surging prices.

Declines in consumer price growth, to below 5% in the U.K. last month and around 3% in the U.S. and eurozone, are fueling expectations that central banks could take their feet off the brakes and pivot to cutting interest rates next year. That would provide welcome relief to a global economy that is struggling outside the U.S.

• Foreigners no longer have an insatiable appetite for U.S. government debt. That’s bad news for Washington.
   
• Washington’s latest curbs on the export of high-performance chips to China are beginning to bite. Alibaba said it had scrapped its plan to spin off and list its cloud-computing division, citing the impact of the export controls.
   
• The growth of artificial intelligence is pressuring corporate privacy leaders to work closely with their cybersecurity, data analytics and other business units as they address risks in new technology projects.

Walgreens wants the corner drugstore to become an online delivery hub.
 

A California law to collect diversity data from venture funds could potentially apply to a wider pool of assets and asset managers.
 

EY picks Janet Truncale as its global chair as the accounting firm looks to put its failed split behind.
 

🎧 Listen to Laura Deming of Longevity Fund discuss futuristic solutions to aging.

• Apple plans to support a standard that will improve messaging with Android phones and enable new features, helping quell the blue-bubble/green-bubble debate around texts.
   
• More Americans are filing for bankruptcy to get rid of their student debt.
   
• Hyundai customers who want to skip going to a dealership will have a new option next year: shopping on Amazon.com.
   
• Elon Musk agreed with a post on X that said Jewish people hold a “dialectical hatred” of white people, eliciting a new round of criticism that he promotes antisemitic views.
   
• The House Ethics Committee said Thursday that it found substantial evidence that Rep. George Santos (R., N.Y.) stole money from his campaign and committed other misdeeds, igniting new calls for his immediate expulsion by colleagues and prompting the embattled lawmaker to say he won’t run for re-election.
   
• Israel’s military said it was close to dismantling Hamas’s military system in the north of the Gaza Strip, as the enclave was plunged into a communications blackout when fuel ran out.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Follow Risk & Compliance editor David Smagalla @DSmagalla_DJ and reporters Mengqi Sun @_MengqiSun, Dylan Tokar @dgtokar and Richard Vanderford @VanderfordRich.

You can reach us by replying to any newsletter, or email David at david.smagalla@wsj.com.