Good morning. The U.S. Treasury Department has decided who can use a sprawling new database of corporate-ownership information, authorizing access to banks and law-enforcement officials, reports Risk & Compliance Journal's Mengqi Sun.

Under a new rule issued Thursday, the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will start providing law enforcement agencies and financial institutions access to its beneficial ownership database in phases beginning in February.

• Shell company crackdown: The rule was the second of three key rulemakings planned by FinCEN to implement the Corporate Transparency Act, in an effort to stop criminals and terrorists from using anonymous shell companies to hide dirty money.
   
• More bank access: For financial institutions, the final rule broadened the definition of “customer due diligence requirements” to allow banks to use the database to comply with obligations under anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws.
  
  Mengqi spoke with WSJ's What's News podcast to share her insights.

Note to readers: The Morning Risk Report is taking a break for the holidays next week and will return Jan. 2. See you in the new year!

U.K. Serious Fraud Office must pay mining company after botched corruption probe.

The U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office must pay Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. after it began a corruption investigation based on tips improperly obtained from a senior lawyer for the company, a U.K. court said.

The SFO committed a “serious breach” of its own duties by privately communicating with a lawyer then at Dechert, a law firm hired by the company to run an internal investigation into possible bribery, Justice David Waksman of the High Court in London said Thursday in a written judgment. Without those communications, the agency wouldn’t have launched its investigation, Waksman found.

European Super League unlawfully blocked by soccer’s governing bodies, EU rules.

Two of world soccer’s most powerful governing bodies were found to have acted unlawfully in their attempts to block the creation of the breakaway European Super League involving 12 of the game’s biggest clubs.

Backers of the failed Super League project, which collapsed in dramatic fashion in 2021, took the ruling as a potential shot in the arm Thursday as the European Union’s highest court ruled UEFA and FIFA had broken competition law by prohibiting clubs and players from participating in the proposed new league. The court found that UEFA and FIFA didn’t have a right to be the only organizers of pan-European soccer competitions and opened the door for other proposals.

• Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical agreed to pay $6 million to resolve allegations by the Justice Department related to false Medicare and Medicaid claims.
   
• The Biden administration’s top economic adviser said Thursday the $14.1 billion deal to acquire U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel deserved “serious scrutiny” regarding its potential impact on national security and supply chains.
   
• Activision Blizzard and a California regulator filed a legal settlement in which the videogame company agreed to pay to resolve gender discrimination charges while the state withdrew sexual-harassment claims.

U.S., China militaries start talking again after a dangerous rupture.

The Pentagon’s top officer spoke with his Chinese counterpart, restoring dialogue between the militaries after a 16-month rupture during which the U.S. said China’s forces conducted dangerous intercepts of American and allied planes and ships.

In a videoconference Thursday, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Liu Zhenli of the People’s Liberation Army’s Joint Staff Department, discussed global and regional security issues as well as other matters, the Pentagon said. China’s Defense Ministry cited Taiwan and the South China Sea as central topics.

• North Korea appears to be operating a more powerful reactor for producing plutonium at its main nuclear site for the first time, the United Nations atomic agency said late Thursday, days after Pyongyang tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S.
   
• New York State Department of Financial Services issued guidance Thursday for state-regulated banking and mortgage institutions on managing climate change-related financial and operations risks.
   
• Nike cut its revenue outlook for the year amid concerns that consumers around the world are becoming more cautious with their spending.
   
• China’s biggest banks are lowering the deposit rates offered to savers, a move that could pave the way for the central bank to make interest-rate cuts to spur economic growth.
   
• Global gaming stocks sank after Beijing released draft regulations for the online game industry that included restrictions on incentives to play or spend more online.
   
• China’s biggest sports brands rode a wave of nationalistic fervor for years, winning over consumers and investors while their Western rivals faltered in the country. The homegrown giants are now stumbling.
   
• India’s booming stock market is attracting millions of individual investors hoping to get rich quick.

• Thrift stores are guessing you’ll be happy with a secondhand gift this Christmas.
   
• Some retailers are using AI to steer certain ads away from shoppers most likely to return products.
   
• Walgreens’s new CIO will try to turn things around after a rocky year in the pharmacy chain’s IT department that was marked by layoffs, disruption and low morale.
   
• Adobe's acquisition of Figma succumbed to pressure from regulators who want to protect innovation. Tech experts split over whether that will work—or have the opposite effect.

• President Biden will send Secretary of State Antony Blinken and top Homeland Security officials to Mexico in the coming days to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “to discuss further actions that can be taken together to address current border challenges," the White House said.
   
• Harvard University is continuing to support its president, Claudine Gay, amid a fresh round of accusations that she plagiarized other academics throughout her career.
   
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser indicated that Israel could accept a U.S. plan for a revamped Palestinian Authority to govern the Gaza Strip after the war.
   
• At least 14 people were killed and dozens more were injured in a mass shooting Thursday afternoon at a university in central Prague, Czech authorities said.
   
• The Dyker Heights Christmas lights in Brooklyn, N.Y., have been a major tourist attraction since the early 2010s, but the lights are a bit dimmer this year

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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