Good morning. Freepoint Commodities agreed to pay more than $98 million to settle allegations it conspired to bribe Brazilian officials to secure business from state-owned oil company Petróleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras.

The settlement resolved a criminal probe by the U.S. Justice Department and a related civil investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission into the commodities trading company for conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

• Cash for info: Prosecutors, in a criminal information document filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, alleged between 2012 and 2018, Freepoint and its co-conspirators paid bribes to Petrobras officials to obtain confidential information about the pricing and bids submitted by Freepoint’s competitors. Freepoint earned over $30 million in profit from the alleged scheme.
   
• Code words: Prosecutors alleged Freepoint and its co-conspirators concealed their activities by using code words and encrypted messaging applications to communicate. They also engaged in sham negotiations and funneled the bribes through an intermediary.
   
• Related charges: The settlement follows Justice Department charges against three individuals in relation to the Freepoint bribery case.

Elon Musk can’t stall SEC investigation, judge says.

A federal judge said she would probably order Elon Musk to cooperate with a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation related to his 2022 takeover of Twitter.

The SEC’s probe looks at whether Musk committed civil fraud by omitting information about his plans for Twitter when he bought up the company’s shares between January and April 2022, according to recent court filings. Musk has long clashed with the SEC.

• In Oklahoma, where a new law requires the state to stop doing business with financial companies that “boycott” the oil-and-gas industry, officials and pension employees are running into hurdles while trying to comply.
   
• This year’s climate conference agreement had four headline policies. So what does this mean for businesses?
   
• The year's most-watched development in crypto is now centered on a technical detail.
   
• A prison sentence handed out Thursday underscored the precipitous fall from grace for former FBI counterintelligence chief Charles McGonigal, who once had access to sensitive information and oversaw investigations into spies and U.S. citizens suspected of working on behalf of foreign governments.
   
• Jan Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of Wirecard, already stands accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from investors. Following multiple international investigations, officials from intelligence, police and judiciary agencies in several countries now say Marsalek used his defunct payments company to illegally help Russian spy agencies move money to fund covert operations.

Insurance doesn’t cover damage to university from WWII Bomb, U.K. Court rules.

A U.K. university can’t get insurance money to pay for losses from the detonation of a World War II-era bomb that sat undiscovered for nearly eight decades, a London appeals court said, finding that coverage is blocked by a policy provision that excludes war-related damage.

Damage to the University of Exeter caused by the dramatic, though planned, explosion on the university grounds in 2021 was “occasioned” by the war, the U.K.’s Court of Appeal said in a decision released Thursday.

Strong holiday spending adds to signs U.S. may beat inflation without downturn.

A surprise increase in November retail sales dispelled lingering pessimism about the economy and reinforced growing sentiment that the U.S. will beat inflation without paying the price in significantly weaker growth.

Signaling a strong start to the holiday season, retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 0.3% in November from the month before, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That was a rebound from October’s downwardly revised 0.2% decline and a surprise to economists who had expected sales to fall again last month.

• World Central Banks Signal Victory Over Inflation Is in Sight

• German authorities on Thursday detained four alleged members of Hamas suspected of planning to attack Jewish institutions in the region—the first suggestion that the Gaza conflict might be spilling over beyond the Middle East. National security adviser Jake Sullivan told Israeli leaders that it was critical for them to begin transitioning their campaign in Gaza to more precise, targeted military operations.
   
• More than 1,000 workers are rushing to finish a massive vessel that embodies the promise and peril of America’s offshore wind-energy dreams. Backers herald the project as part of a burgeoning boom in green manufacturing, but those hopes face mounting threats.
   
• Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to press on with his war in Ukraine.
   
• China’s economic recovery showed signs of losing further momentum as investment and consumer spending expanded slower than expected last month, fueling calls for policy makers to do more to support growth.
   
• Building China-free supply chains is tough. Sometimes it means dealing with lizards that don’t have legs and sands that are radioactive.
   
• At charter schools, as elsewhere, boom times have given way to belt-tightening, raising questions about who will survive. Higher salaries and dwindling federal Covid aid are stretching revenues and squeezing budgets.

• Ernst & Young is laying off dozens of partners as the accounting firm faces slowing demand for certain services.
   
• Companies are wrestling with how much information to report about cyberattacks under new disclosure rules, worried that saying too much might invite lawsuits and more hacks.
   
• Opioid victims are finding that billions of dollars pledged by drugmakers to settle lawsuits have been snared in the morass of the nation’s bankruptcy system.

🎧 Listen to Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen discuss what he sees as the role of technology versus human interaction in running a global logistics company.

• Stocks extended their year-end rally.
   
• The self-driving car company Cruise laid off nearly a quarter of its workforce Thursday following a series of safety mishaps and permit suspensions by the business owned by General Motors.
   
• Here’s the face of the new C-suite: older, with broader industry experience and increasingly female.
   
• Senate negotiators moved closer to striking a broad deal on changes to U.S. border policy after the White House offered significant concessions to win Republicans’ support for separate legislation further funding Ukraine in its war against Russia.
   
• Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia wants “to reach an agreement” on the return of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is currently in Russian custody on an allegation of espionage that he, the Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny.

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