Good morning. U.K. activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners is doubling down on its call for BP to remove its chairman and lead independent director, while urging the company to comment on a media report that detailed a further change in the oil company’s strategy.

Reuters reported last week that BP abandoned a target to cut oil-and-gas output by 2030, with Chief Executive Murray Auchincloss reining in the firm’s energy transition targets to regain investor confidence. BP said it doesn’t comment on speculation.

• Context. Under previous CEO Bernard Looney, the company launched a high-profile push into renewable energy, outlining an ambitious plan in 2020 to cut oil-and-gas output by 40% within 10 years. But following disappointing returns from some of BP’s renewable investments, the company said last year that it would slow its shift to lower-carbon energy, targeting a 25% reduction by 2030.
   
• Pushback. In a letter sent to both the BP board and the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority, Bluebell said that while news of the removal of oil-and-gas production targets is welcome, it constitutes key price-sensitive information that should have been announced through the proper channels. Bluebell partners Giuseppe Bivona and Marco Taricco said in a letter that this could potentially be a breach of listing rules, demanding that BP immediately issue a press release confirming or denying the Reuters report.
   
• The company's response. A BP spokesperson said the company fully complies with its legal and regulatory obligations. “As Murray said at the start of this year in our fourth-quarter results, the direction is the same—but we are going to deliver as a simpler, more focused, and higher value company,” the spokesperson said.

Trump loyalists push for a combative slate of new judges.

A rising faction within the conservative legal movement is laying the groundwork for Donald Trump to appoint judges who prioritize loyalty to him and aggressively advocate for dismantling the federal government should he win a second term.

Since losing the 2020 election, Trump has broken with Federalist Society leaders who had eagerly boosted his blitz of judicial appointments during his first term but later balked at his efforts to thwart President Biden’s victory and didn’t openly support him as he faced dozens of criminal charges.

Trump has gravitated to more-combative lawyers outside the conservative legal establishment who have said they want to hobble regulatory agencies and concentrate power in the White House.

Q&A: How do growth limits on banks work?

TD Bank’s U.S. unit faces growth restrictions from regulators. Here's WSJ’s Vipal Monga on how those limits work and what they mean for banks.

VM: “To punish TD Bank for its money-laundering lapses, U.S. regulators capped how much the bank can lend to consumers and businesses and how much it can invest in bonds and other securities. It’s a big deal; U.S. officials have rarely taken this step.

TD can’t grow its U.S. retail banking operations beyond the $434 billion it had on its books as of September. TD will also need to get permission from regulators before it can open new branches or enter into any new lines of business. It will have to hire two independent monitors, to ensure the bank is complying with the regulators’ sweeping orders.

The growth cap handcuffs TD’s U.S. business, which contributes roughly 30% to the bank’s total earnings. TD, Canada’s second-largest bank, had been counting on the U.S. for much of its growth. Now, not only will that growth be capped, but the business will become much more expensive.

Growth restrictions are open-ended. Wells Fargo was hit with an asset cap in 2018, after the bank was found to have created fake customer accounts. Six years later, that cap remains in place.”

🎧 Listen to Risk and Compliance Journal’s Dylan Tokar discuss TD Bank's blockbuster anti-money laundering settlement on the WSJ's Journal podcast.

Citi sees possibility of $120 oil if supplies are disrupted.

Crude oil prices could go into triple digits if supplies are disrupted by conflict in the Middle East, despite weak market fundamentals, analysts at Citi Research said Monday in a report.

Citi said its base case is still for international benchmark Brent to average $74 a barrel in the fourth quarter and $65 a barrel in the first quarter of 2025, “owing to weak underlying oil market fundamentals.”

But analysts increased their bull-case estimate to $120 from $80 a barrel for the fourth quarter and first quarter of next year, while assigning such an outcome a probability of 20%, up from 10% previously.

• China said it concluded a day of “around-the-clock” drills around Taiwan, sending a record number of military aircraft and saying for the first time that it had deployed its coast guard to encircle the self-ruled democracy’s main island.
   
• Logistics operators and fulfillment providers are largely holding their seasonal hiring plans steady with last year as they prepare for what they expect to be a muted holiday shopping season.
   
• The International Energy Agency trimmed its forecast for this year’s oil-demand growth for the third month in a row, as a rapid slowdown in Chinese consumption weighs on the global outlook.
   
• Government debts are set to match the annual output of the global economy by the end of this decade, and could cross that threshold much sooner if economic growth is weaker or interest payments are higher than expected, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday.
   
• British workers booked smaller pay rises over the summer, according to figures released Tuesday, underpinning expectations that the Bank of England will lower its key interest rate for a second time next month.

• Google will back the construction of seven small nuclear-power reactors in the U.S., a first-of-its-kind deal that aims to help feed the tech company’s growing appetite for electricity to power AI and jump-start a U.S. nuclear revival.
   
• The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson for work that advanced the understanding of economic disparities among countries.
   
• Starbucks is pulling back on promotions and discounts, an early move by Brian Niccol, the new chief executive officer, to reposition the coffee chain after a turbulent year.
   
• Canada and India expelled diplomats from each country on Monday, intensifying a dispute over the killing of a Sikh activist last year.
   
• Manoj Bhargava has said he follows a “zero-profit” business model of making money from the rich to give to the poor. Not so fast, say U.S. tax authorities. They have another take on Bhargava’s Robin Hood moves: tax abuse.

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