Good morning. Gautam Adani, the billionaire founder of one of India’s biggest business conglomerates, was charged by the Justice Department with orchestrating a massive bribery scheme to pay off Indian government officials to secure lucrative solar-energy supply contracts.

• The case: Prosecutors announced a 54-page indictment Wednesday that alleges Adani, the chairman of the Adani Group, personally met with Indian officials to advance the illicit deal and secure contracts worth billions of dollars for a renewable-energy company owned by the conglomerate. Prosecutors also alleged that Gautam Adani, 62 years old, and two Adani Green Energy executives conspired to misrepresent the renewable-energy firm’s antibribery and corruption practices to U.S. investors and financial institutions to obtain financing.
   
• Who else is charged: In total, eight executives were charged in the scheme. None of the defendants have been arrested and are believed to be at large overseas, according to a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, which brought the case. One of the defendants is Sagar Adani, Gautam Adani’s nephew who oversees the Adani Group’s renewable-energy businesses.
   
• Corporate background: Gautam Adani founded the Adani Group in 1988. It built its energy empire on coal and is now setting up a solar supply chain. It is also building a solar farm in Western India that is expected to cover an area over five times the size of Paris. The group’s flagship firm, Adani Enterprises, has started making materials used for making solar-power cells and panels. It is the first Indian company to do so.

Archegos founder Bill Hwang sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Archegos Capital Management founder Bill Hwang was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Wednesday after he was found guilty of manipulating stock prices and defrauding banks as part of a scheme that led to the biggest single-firm meltdown since the financial crisis.

A New York federal jury this summer found Hwang guilty of 10 counts including securities fraud and market manipulation. Hwang has denied wrongdoing, and his lawyer has indicated Hwang intends to appeal.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the sentence was a “symbol to others that if you don’t live by the law, you could be punished very severely by the law.”

• The Justice Department on Wednesday said Google should have to sell off its popular Chrome browser as part of a court-ordered fix to its monopolization of the online search market.
• ​Gary Wang, FTX’s former chief technology officer, avoided prison time for his role in one of the largest financial crimes in U.S. history, with a federal judge lauding the defendant at his sentencing Wednesday for aiding prosecutors in the case.
• Rio Tinto is finding it difficult to stamp out sexual harassment, racism and bullying as it faces resistance and backlash from some workers to its efforts to overhaul the culture of one of the world’s biggest miners.
• The nation’s largest workforce could soon be ordered back to the office full-time.
• A controversial method of generating carbon offsets from forestry projects received a seal of approval from an independent governance group on Friday.

SEC took fewer enforcement actions this year, but pace remains above average.

The number of enforcement actions taken by the Securities and Exchange Commission against public companies and subsidiaries dropped 12% in the 2024 fiscal year compared with the previous year, according to a new report.

Despite the decline, the 80 enforcement actions taken by the SEC last year amount to a nearly 5% increase over the prior nine-year average, according to an analysis by the New York University Pollack Center for Law and Business and consulting firm Cornerstone Research.

Recordkeeping violations stemming from off-channel communications were a key focus during the most recent fiscal year, with the SEC making 22 such enforcement actions. The agency has been cracking down on recordkeeping violations in recent years. In September, 12 firms agreed to pay roughly $88.3 million in combined civil penalties after they were charged by the SEC for failing to maintain and preserve electronic communication in violation of the regulator’s record-keeping provisions.

Settlements that didn’t result in a financial penalty also rose during the 2024 fiscal year, the study found. The share of public company and subsidiary settlements with no monetary penalty rose to 15% from 9% during fiscal year 2023. No-monetary settlements on average accounted for 6% of settlements from fiscal year 2015 through 2023.

–Marc Vartabedian

Boeing CEO to employees: We can’t afford another mistake.

Boeing Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg told employees the once mighty manufacturer has serious culture problems and can’t afford another mistake.

Ortberg, who took over in August, offered a blunt assessment of the troubled aircraft maker’s situation in an hour-long, companywide meeting on Wednesday. He called out bloated management ranks, wasteful spending and a culture of infighting and shirking responsibility.

Chinese-registered ship is held in Baltic Sea sabotage investigation.

A Chinese ship that sailed over two severed data cables in the Baltic Sea around the time they were cut has been stopped by the Danish navy as part of an international investigation into what police say is a possible act of sabotage.

Detaining a foreign vessel without a warrant is unusual. However, a rarely used article in a centuries-old convention could give the Danes the legal authority to detain the Yi Peng 3, said Kenneth Øhlenschlæger Buhl, a military analyst and expert on maritime law with the Royal Danish Defense College.

• American businesses are dusting off a playbook they used during Trump’s first term: stocking up on imported goods before tariffs are enacted. 
• A looming trade war would create many headaches for Asia. Add a strengthening dollar to that list.
• The lead U.S. negotiator on ending the war between Israel and Hezbollah said he had made progress on a two-day trip to Beirut and would travel to Israel to try to secure a cease-fire agreement that has so far proven elusive.
• As Xi Jinping prepares for a thorny trade relationship with President-elect Donald Trump, he is cultivating a rapport with someone he calls a like-minded good friend, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
• Federal Reserve Gov. Michelle Bowman said that inflation still dominates her concerns about the economy, arguing for a cautious approach to further rate cuts by the central bank.

Richard, who has been with Ally almost 27 years, was named chief audit executive in 2018. Before that, she served as Ally’s deputy chief risk officer.

• The bipartisan House panel probing sexual-misconduct allegations against former Rep. Matt Gaetz declined Wednesday to release its report on President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, setting the stage for an effort by Democrats to force a vote on the matter.
   
• Nvidia’s sales surged in its latest quarter and profits nearly doubled, a sign of the strength of an artificial intelligence boom that has made the company the world’s most valuable.
   
• The Pentagon said Wednesday that it was sending antipersonnel mines to Ukraine.
   
• Hong Kong media baron Jimmy Lai, who protested for democracy, now faces a possible life sentence.
   
• Volkswagen union boss Daniela Cavallo faces the battle of her career as she fights what would be the first German factory closures in the automaker’s history.

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