Good morning. Broadcom Chief Executive Hock Tan shelled out $40,000 to sit at Xi Jinping’s table for the Chinese leader’s recent dinner in San Francisco with the heads of American businesses. Tan had a lot more at stake—a $69 billion deal he was waiting on China to approve.

• Deals held up: For months, Chinese regulators wouldn’t clear the U.S. chipmaker’s bid to buy enterprise-software developer VMware, leading Broadcom to put off its date for completion of the deal—first announced in May 2022—three times. Beijing had held up previous mergers involving U.S. companies. Intel’s planned acquisition of Israeli firm Tower Semiconductor, for more than $5 billion, was scuttled in August after Chinese regulators failed to approve it.
   
• Now moving forward: A few days after the dinner, China signed off on Broadcom’s deal. Beijing also gave a long-awaited green light to New York-based payments processor Mastercard to issue yuan-denominated cards bearing its brand in the country.
   
• The context: Some observers saw the moves as olive branches to American corporations as firms grow wary of doing business in China. The moves also show how companies can become pawns in the intensifying geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing.
   
• What this could mean for trade: “It is a carrots-and-sticks operating environment, and we appear to be in the carrots mode,” said James Zimmerman, a partner at Perkins Coie, who counsels foreign companies on corporate and regulatory issues in China. “China is an operating environment where every license, permit and approval is a process that can become highly politicized, and more so when U.S.-China relations go south.” 

Bank of America fined $12 million by CFPB over mortgage data reporting.

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has fined Bank of America $12 million for allegedly submitting inaccurate mortgage lending information to the federal government.

What the consent order said: The agency said Tuesday that the bank’s loan officers failed in some instances to ask mortgage applicants certain federally required demographic questions, including about race, ethnicity and sex, but incorrectly reported that the applicants had opted not to respond to those questions.

UBS chairman says Swiss regulator needs more teeth.

Here's a rarity: A banker calling for tougher bank regulation.

UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher said Switzerland needs to sharpen the teeth of its financial regulator following UBS's March rescue of Credit Suisse.

Swiss regulators didn't have the necessary tools to hold Credit Suisse bankers and board members accountable for running an unviable business model, Kelleher said. Regulators in the U.S. and U.K. have some of those powers.

• The Securities and Exchange Commission has only a couple of days left to save its new rule aiming to give investors more information about companies’ share repurchases.
   
• The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority said it has provisionally found Adobe’s planned $20 billion acquisition of collaboration-software company Figma would likely harm innovation for software used by the vast majority of U.K. digital designers.
   
• Panama’s top court ruled Tuesday against a contract between the government and Canadian miner First Quantum Minerals, placing in jeopardy one of the world’s largest copper mines.
   
• The Biden administration is telling federal employees to get back in the office on a more regular basis. It isn’t having much better luck than private companies.
   
• U.S. companies have lost momentum in promoting Black professionals into management, according to new data from McKinsey & Co.

Fed’s Waller endorses extending pause in interest-rate hikes.

A Federal Reserve official who has been a leading advocate over the past two years for hiking rates to slow inflation said recent progress should allow the central bank to extend a pause in rate increases at least into early next year.

Fed governor Christopher Waller said Tuesday the latest data on hiring, activity and inflation had made him “increasingly confident that policy is currently well-positioned to slow the economy and get inflation back to 2%.”

1.5 degrees: a tiny number with a global effect.

Nearly 200 nations and business leaders pledged eight years ago to keep Earth from warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius. That goal has proven difficult to meet.

Why the attention now? On Thursday, world leaders and companies will convene in Dubai at the COP28 climate summit where negotiators are pushing big nations to make good on promises to slash industrial emissions to keep the Earth from warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius—about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

Here’s what to know about the 1.5 C goal.

• Home prices rose to a new record in September due to a shortage of homes for sale, even as high interest rates made home purchases less affordable.
   
• China’s central bank governor warned against continuing to rely on infrastructure and real-estate sectors, and pointed to the need to nurture new growth drivers as Beijing looks to chart a new path for the world’s second-largest economy.
   
• An industrial elevator that plunged some 650 feet down a decades-old shaft killed 11 miners and injured 75 others at South Africa’s largest platinum mine. The accident highlights the dangers involved in mining in the country, the largest producer of platinum globally and a major gold producer.
   
• The chief brokers of the Israel-Hamas hostage-prisoner exchange are pushing the two sides for a long-term cease-fire that would prolong the truce in Gaza beyond the current two-day extension and start talks that would end the war altogether, said Egyptian and Qatari officials.
   
• The war with Hamas will cost Israel about $53 billion between 2023 and 2025, according to new forecasts from the Israeli central bank.

• Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s closest friend and consigliere for six decades and the billionaire vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway died Tuesday at age 99 in a California hospital.
   
• Billionaire Charles Koch’s political network is backing the Republican presidential bid of Nikki Haley, the latest sign some big donors are moving her way.
   
• American Airlines is joining the race to remove carbon from the atmosphere, tapping a novel method that is much cheaper than many existing approaches and could boost the fledgling industry.
   
• Ukraine said the wife of one of its top military leaders had been poisoned.
   
• A Russian court ruled to extend the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich for a third time since he was taken into custody in March on an allegation of espionage.

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