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Reuters reports that top consulting firms including KPMG, EY and Bain & Co are doing business in China in ways that some industry and legal experts say test the boundaries of Western sanctions. Interviews by Reuters with 10 current and former industry figures and a review of engagement agreements and company communications are said to demonstrate how the consultancies have sought to maneuver around evolving constraints.

 

Reuters

Swiss trading house Trafigura has won a victory at London's High Court after a judge found businessman Prateek Gupta liable for fraud involving fake nickel cargoes. Trafigura claimed Gupta was the mastermind of a "Ponzi scheme" in which he and his companies agreed to provide high-quality 99.8% pure nickel but delivered low-value or even worthless materials instead. The long-running legal dispute began in 2023 after the fake nickel shipments emerged and Trafigura filed charges against its former business partner Gupta. The ruling by Judge Justice Saini recommends that Geneva-based Trafigura is entitled to relief for “sums of about $500m, together with substantial damages.”

 

Bloomberg

Financial Times

Reuters

Google has persuaded a federal judge to reject a bid by consumers for more than $2bn in penalties over the company’s past collection of data from users who had switched off a key privacy setting. The tech giant urged Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco not to add the penalty to a jury’s verdict in September that found Google liable for secretly collecting app activity data from millions of users who had disabled a tracking feature.

 

PYMNTS.com

Reuters

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has appointed retired EY partner Demetrios “Jim” Logothetis as chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). Mr. Logothetis, who spent more than 40 years at EY before retiring in 2019, will lead a newly reshaped board as the SEC seeks to refocus the watchdog on what it describes as more “sensible, efficient” audit oversight. The SEC also named Mark Calabria, Kyle Hauptman and Steven Laughton as new PCAOB board members, while acting chair George Botic will remain on the board. The appointments follow criticism from audit firms over the PCAOB’s previous rule-making agenda and come alongside tighter SEC scrutiny, a reduced budget and lower board compensation. The leadership change marks a shift in direction for the PCAOB, which was created after the Enron and WorldCom scandals to strengthen audit regulation.

 

Wall Street Journal

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has introduced a rule mandating that new passenger airplanes maintain 25 hours of cockpit voice recordings (CVR), a significant increase from the previous two-hour standard, effective from 2027. The move aims to bolster accident investigations by providing "substantially more CVR data" for assessing incidents, and responds to long-standing advocacy from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Similar regulations have been in place in Europe since 2021.

 

Reuters

The United States has agreed to reduce tariffs on Indian goods to 18% under a new trade deal, after India committed to stop buying Russian oil and significantly increase purchases from the U.S., President Donald Trump has said. The agreement removes both the previous 25% “reciprocal” tariff and an additional 25% levy imposed over India’s Russian oil imports. As part of the pact, India has also pledged to lower tariffs and non-tariff barriers on U.S. goods to zero and to buy up to $500bn of American energy and agricultural products. The deal follows months of strained negotiations but comes amid resilient bilateral trade, with Indian exports such as pharmaceuticals, electronics and smartphones continuing to grow strongly despite earlier tariff measures.

 

Bloomberg

CNBC

New York Times

Wall Street Journal

Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods has said that the company possesses the necessary technology to exploit higher-cost crude oil from Venezuela, signalling a shift in attitude towards investment in the region. Despite previously labelling Venezuela as "uninvestable," Woods said he now anticipates U.S. efforts to stabilize the country and create a conducive investment atmosphere.

 

Reuters

London-based fintech Starling Bank has launched a push to sell its software to U.S. lenders as it seeks to capitalize on their outdated technology and boost its international growth.

 

Financial Times

France’s Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has ordered the country's ministries to shift their video calls to Visio, an application developed by the French government, from American-owned tools such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, by the end of the year. “To guarantee the security, confidentiality and resilience of public electronic communications, it is  . . . imperative to deploy a unified videoconferencing solution, controlled by the State, based on sovereign technologies,” he wrote in a letter. The tool was built by the French government with Outscale, a France-based cloud company, and enlisted two French AI companies, Pyannote and Kyutai, to offer transcription and subtitling services.

 

Financial Times

New York Times

Moltbook, a social media platform for AI agents, has exposed the private information of over 6,000 users due to a significant security lapse linked to "vibe coding," according to cybersecurity firm Wiz. The vulnerability allowed for the interception of private messages and user credentials, prompting Wiz to report the issue, which has since been addressed. Creator Matt Schlicht previously claimed he didn't personally code the site and has defended vibe coding, despite the potential security risks highlighted by experts.

 

Reuters

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as "forever chemicals," are increasingly impacting the insurance market. Jared Dubrowsky, executive vice president at Howden U.S., noted that while PFAS exclusions are now standard in general liability (GL) policies, some coverage remains available for bodily injury and property damage. He said: "PFAS is going to be an issue for the foreseeable future." The lack of federal cleanup criteria complicates remediation coverage, but brokers are adapting by enhancing their advisory roles and exploring clients' historical insurance policies for potential coverage gaps.

 

Insurance Business Magazine America

President Donald Trump has directed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem not to intervene in protests in Democratic-led cities unless local authorities request federal assistance. Trump offered no details on how his order would affect operations by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement and DHS personnel, or other federal agencies, but said: “We will, however, guard, and very powerfully so, any and all Federal Buildings that are being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists.”

 

NPR / National Public Radio

U.S. News