Good morning. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China will pay about $32 million to resolve investigations into alleged compliance problems at the bank’s New York branch.

ICBC, the world’s largest bank by assets, entered into settlements with the Federal Reserve and the New York State Department of Financial Services, the regulators said Friday.

• Breaking down the fines: ICBC will pay $30 million in connection with an NYDFS investigation that found deficiencies in the anti-money-laundering and Bank Secrecy Act compliance programs at ICBC’s New York branch between 2018 and 2022. The Federal Reserve fined the bank another $2.4 million for alleged unauthorized use and disclosure of confidential supervisory information.
   
• Document issues: NYDFS said it also found that compliance documents had been backdated and that ICBC had failed to report the issue to the NYDFS in a timely manner.
   
• The bank's response: ICBC said that the settlement acknowledged the bank’s remediation efforts, and doesn’t reflect the current state of the compliance programs and internal controls at its New York branch, adding that the bank considers compliance and risk management a “top priority.”

JetBlue, Spirit Airlines to appeal merger block.

JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines plan to appeal a federal judge’s ruling blocking their planned merger, the carriers said late Friday.

U.S. District Judge William Young on Tuesday ruled that JetBlue can’t go forward with its planned $3.8 billion acquisition of Spirit, siding with federal antitrust enforcers who said the deal would reduce competition and harm cost-conscious consumers.

What they might face. Challenging the decision could be an uphill legal battle, and some analysts have grown more skeptical that the acquisition still makes sense for JetBlue.

FTX must appoint watchdog to probe reasons for Its collapse, judges say.

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that an independent examiner must be appointed to oversee FTX’s ongoing bankruptcy to sort out what went wrong at the cryptocurrency exchange before it collapsed, reports WSJ Pro Bankruptcy (subscription required).

“The collapse of FTX caused catastrophic losses for its worldwide investors but also raised implications for the evolving and volatile cryptocurrency industry,” the judges wrote in their opinion.

• Exxon Mobil is suing two sustainable investment firms in a bid to block them from putting forward a shareholder proposal that would commit the oil company to further curb its greenhouse-gas emissions and target its customers’ emissions.
   
• Apple has agreed to let third-party mobile wallet and payment services in Europe use the technology behind its Apple Pay app in a move to allay competition concerns from European regulators.
   
• Agriculture company Archer Daniels Midland placed its chief financial officer, Vikram Luthar, on administrative leave as it investigates accounting practices at the company.
   
• Wells Fargo employees at a branch in Atwater, Calif., voted against unionizing, a setback in the first ever megabank organizing effort.
   
• The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is recommending that airlines check a second type of Boeing jet that uses the same kind of door plug as the one that blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this month.

Ocean shipping rates surge as Red Sea attacks continue.

Global shipping prices are continuing to rise as Houthi rebels keep up attacks on cargo vessels in and around the Red Sea.

The impact. The disruptions are at a key point for ships passing through the Suez Canal and are creating ripples across supply chains in Europe and the U.S., delaying shipments and raising transportation costs.

U.S., Arab allies push hostage-release plan aimed at ending Israel-Hamas war.

The U.S., Egypt and Qatar are pushing Israel and Hamas to join a phased diplomatic process that would start with a release of hostages and, eventually, lead to a withdrawal of Israeli forces and an end to the war in Gaza, diplomats involved in mediating the talks said.

Taher Al-Nono, a media adviser to Hamas, said there was no real progress. After The Wall Street Journal’s report, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he rejected Hamas’s demands because they included an end to the war.

• U.S., Israel Voice Conflicting Views on Future Palestinian State, Exposing Friction
• Israeli Strike Kills Five Iranian Military Advisers in Syria, Iran Says

• Many workers came off the sidelines to join the labor force in 2022 and 2023, aiding the Federal Reserve’s fight to tame inflation by easing labor shortages and putting downward pressure on wage growth. Big additional gains may be hard to achieve.
   
• American workers are getting restless in their jobs just as the labor market is making it much tougher for them to jump to something new.
   
• Beijing’s closest political partner in Taiwan is fighting to remain relevant in an island democracy where voters increasingly see a future that is detached from an authoritarian China.
   
• Microsoft disclosed Friday that it was targeted by a Russian state-sponsored hacking group that stole information from its senior leadership team and other employees.
   
• Boeing was having trouble making enough 737s before the Alaska Airlines door-plug blowout. Now it faces new concerns that added inspections and regulatory scrutiny will sap its output this year.
   
• Charles Schwab last year weathered a banking crisis, layoffs and a sharp drop in its stock price. Inside the company, employees are preparing for another uncertain year.
   
• Ukraine hit a Russian fuel terminal on the Baltic Sea, one of its longest-range strikes yet in a growing effort to damage Russia’s war economy.

• Wall Street entered 2024 betting the year would go perfectly, but an up-and-down start for stocks and bonds suggests the going won’t be easy.
   
• An investor that lodged a $5.8 billion bid to buy Macy’s threatened to bring the matter to shareholders if deal talks with the famed department-store chain don’t pick up.
   
• Ron DeSantis ended his presidential bid, a crushing defeat for a figure who once represented the strongest hope for Republicans wanting to move past Donald Trump.
   
• Being let go used to be a private moment. Now it’s often fodder for social-media content.
   
• From one television channel to the next, plaintiffs’ lawyers who specialize in mass litigation are inundating the airwaves, as well as digital media, with ads seeking clients for personal-injury and product-liability cases, an ad boom that comes as court dockets continue to grow.

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.

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