Saudi Aramco’s slow trickle of IPO-related information continued this weekend, including its goal of setting overall company market value at a staggering $1.7 trillion. The figure, though massive, is still well short of the $2 trillion valuation originally floated by MBS – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
As the 737 Max grounding heads into its eighth month, the pressure is mounting for both Boeing to finalize a fix and for the FAA to sign off. In fact, Boeing’s been prodding Agency engineers to begin testing its new Max software “even though the agency has not fully vetted” it yet, prompting FAA chief Stephen Dickson to release a video assuring his charges that they should resist any outside influence to end the grounding sooner than they feel is right – NYTimes and WSJ
Following in the normal course of things after a strike with a competing automaker, UAW members have ratified a new contract with Ford on terms comparable to those its brothers and sisters reached with General Motors a few weeks ago. Fiat Chrysler’s next – NYTimes and WSJ
The other shoe’s about to drop at WeWork, and it’s taking the form of massive job cuts that could see the troubled company shed upwards of a third of its workforce – NYTimes
Streetwise helps us make sense of a market content on charging forward without much thought about why, exactly, it’s doing so. AKA, the logic that drove stocks to new highs this summer no longer applies, but investors don’t seem to care – WSJ and MarketWatch
Aluminum foil and Hefty trash bag maker Reynolds Consumer Products Inc. has filed for a US IPO with hopes for a $7 billion valuation – Bloomberg
FedEx is far from alone in its use of the 2017 tax cut bill to its advantage, but the sheer scale of its impact on the company—which dropped the delivery giant’s tab from $1.5 billion to zero—is worth a closer look – NYTimes
Federal prosecutors have charged a fourth person—former JPMorgan salesman Jeffrey Ruffo—of criminal racketeering “over an alleged multimillion-dollar precious metals market spoofing scheme” – Law360
The Chinese government has intervened to bail out another midsized bank, this time Harbin Bank—one of the “biggest financial businesses in China’s northeast” that trades on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The government replaced six private stakeholders and now controls 48% of the bank – WSJ
More tough news for Nissan, which followed up disastrous Q3 numbers with a recall of nearly 400,000 cars—including Pathfinders sold in the past 3 years—over concerns about fire risks from brake fluid leaking into internal circuit boards – Bloomberg
The White House appears set to “once again extend a license that will allow American companies to continue doing business with Huawei.” As we’ve discussed before, the Chinese telecom giant isn’t technically part of US/China trade negotiations, but both Beijing and the White House have treated it as such, and the extension may bode well for ongoing phase one trade deal negotiations – NYTimes
A Journal weekend long-read considers how Google keeps a thumb on the scales of its search results, professed-sanctity-of-the-algorithm be damned – WSJ
Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, and a spate of other big banks have drawn a hard line between information sharing and rate rigging in their defense against claims by Philadelphia and Baltimore that they engaged in an antitrust conspiracy to “fix the interest rate of city-issued bonds” – Law360
Lawyers + math = sure trouble, Oklahoma Opioid Settlement version – NYTimes and Law360
We’ll say this about the black hole at the center of the Milky Way—it’s not subtle. Take S5-HVS1, for example, the star that the black hole unceremoniously ejected at a speed of 4 million miles an hour – NYTimes
