Good morning. Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods pushed back hard against several shareholder proposals Wednesday—and even harder against the activist investors who put the resolutions forward.

At the company’s annual meeting, Woods outlined not only the Exxon board’s opposition to several resolutions—which included requests for reports on company pay gaps and social impacts—but also why it believed the investors behind the requests were abusing the system for making proposals.

• The background: Exxon’s rebuke came after some big investors vowed to vote against Woods and other directors in response to a lawsuit the company filed to prevent two groups from filing shareholder resolutions. The shareholders opposed to the lawsuit included Calpers, the country’s largest public pension manager, and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.
   
• The vote: On Wednesday, most investors sided with Exxon. The company said its director nominees garnered on average the support of 95% of the votes cast, with a range from 87% to 98%. That’s down from last year, when the average support for the directors came in at 96%, and the votes ranged from 91% to 99%.
   
• The response: Exxon has been at the vanguard of a corporate counterattack against what some perceive as growing political and cultural activism waged through the shareholder proposal process. The company in January filed its lawsuit against shareholder proponents that it said were pursuing a “Trojan horse” strategy to deliberately hurt the company as it pursues climate change-related goals.

FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried heads back east in prison U-turn. 

Federal prison officials have moved Sam Bankman-Fried to a facility in Pennsylvania, a sign that the FTX founder could be on his way back to the jail in New York that he left last week.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons website showed Wednesday that Bankman-Fried was at the federal correctional institution in Lewisburg, Pa. Earlier this week, the website showed him at a transit facility in Oklahoma that often houses federal inmates being moved across the country.

Bankman-Fried’s move back east could be a sign that prison officials are returning him to New York after a federal judge recommended that he be allowed to stay at the Metropolitan Detention Facility in Brooklyn to be closer to the lawyers preparing his appeal.

Blacklisted Chinese companies rebrand as American to dodge crackdown.

Chinese firms trying to buffer themselves from Washington’s anti-China policies are rebranding and creating U.S.-domiciled businesses to sell their wares as the Biden administration expands the government entity lists that restrict Chinese companies’ business dealings in the U.S., say policymakers and national-security experts. The blacklisting has also created opportunities for American entrepreneurs who want to work with Chinese companies that are popular with U.S. consumers.

“Chinese firms take a blow but then adjust business strategy and are able to move in another direction,” said Derek Scissors, a former commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

• BHP Group is walking away from its roughly $50 billion takeover bid for Anglo American after failing to convince its rival to further engage in talks on what would have been the largest-ever mining deal. The Australian mining giant said Wednesday that it didn’t intend to make a firm offer for its London-listed rival because the companies were unable to come to an agreement on how to handle regulatory risks and costs generated by the deal. 
   
• The jurors who will decide whether to convict former President Donald Trump of 34 felonies wrapped up their first day of deliberations Wednesday after asking to hear some testimony again.
   
• Meta Platforms said its security team took down a network of hundreds of fake accounts on Facebook and Instagram linked to an Israeli technology firm that apparently used AI-generated comments to praise Israel and criticize campus antisemitism.
   
• Last week the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said he would resign. Then he went back to work.

Israel says it gains control of Gaza border with Egypt as Rafah offensive advances.

Israel said it has secured control of Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, achieving a key goal of the Rafah offensive as it seeks to eliminate Hamas without crossing red lines set by President Biden.

Israeli officials say taking control of the roughly 9-mile border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, will allow Israel to prevent Hamas from rearming by smuggling weapons through tunnels that reach into Egypt. Israel last controlled the corridor in 2005, before relinquishing control of the enclave to the Palestinians.

• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signaled on Wednesday that the U.S. is weighing the idea of allowing Kyiv to strike Russian territory with American-provided weapons in light of the evolving battlefield situation in Ukraine.
   
• China’s economic outlook seems brighter after a strong first-quarter performance and recent policy stimulus, the International Monetary Fund said as it raised growth forecasts for the country.
   
• Russia launched plans to sharply raise taxes on high earners and companies to fill state coffers and fund what it sees as a long war in Ukraine.
   
• An unusual sight drifted into South Korean skies on Wednesday: Large white balloons carrying plastic bags of North Korean trash. Some contained something even more vile.

• Donald Trump and Elon Musk have discussed a possible advisory role for the Tesla leader should the presumptive Republican nominee reclaim the White House, the latest sign that the once-frosty relationship between the two men has thawed.
   
• PricewaterhouseCoopers will become the largest customer and first reseller of OpenAI’s enterprise product, as part of a new deal the two companies announced Wednesday.

A headline in the Risk section of Tuesday's newsletter misspelled "civilians" as "vivilians."

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