After a brutal Tuesday, the White House tried to take advantage of yesterday’s market day off to run some damage control “and ease concerns that [the] trade truce with China was already floundering.” I suspect we’ll find out pretty early today whether traders are buying it – NYTimes and Bloomberg

Canadian authorities have, at the request of the United States, arrested the CFO of China’s Huawei Technologies over alleged sanctions violations. Beyond her C-suite role, CFO Meng Wanzhou is also a daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei – WSJ and Bloomberg

Any guesses on how well the news of her arrest went over in China (and on Wall Street)?  If you said “like a lead balloon,” you get a prize – Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch

Documents released by a British parliamentary committee show that Facebook “used the mountains of data it collected on users to favor certain partners and punish rivals,” behavior that appears to confirm the view that data is the ‘book’s “most valuable resource”—one that key execs “often wielded . . . to gain a strategic advantage” – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and TheNewYorker

The UK’s antitrust enforcer announced yesterday that it’s “deepening its investigation” of PayPal’s proposed $2.2 billion takeover of Swedish rival IZettle after “the U.S. payment company failed to address . . . concerns that the deal could stifle competition” – Law360

Dealbook’s Common Sense column has taken in the latest bombshells from the draft report by CBS’s outside lawyers and finds a disaster of epic proportions—not just for Les Moonves’s victims but for CBS’s board, shareholders, and corporate future – NYTimes

Deutsche Bank and a Royal Park-led group of investors have reached a deal to resolve NY-and California-based litigation “over the bank’s handling of hundreds of RMBS trusts” that had an initial face value of more than $570 billion. No word on the amount – Law360

AIG CFO Sid Sankaran is out and Mark Lyons in, a sudden move by the insurance  giant that the Journal assures us actually a good sign for the company that’s still trying to regain investor trust after the ’08 financial crisis – WSJ

A slowing economy and increased regulation are likely to make 2019 a markedly cooler year for Chinese venture capital scene, which poured an incredible $56 billion into Chinese start-ups in just half of 2018—more, for the first time, than landed in Silicon Valley during the same period – NYTimes

Wells Fargo announced that it is dismissing around 3 dozen district managers “for oversight failures related to a sales scandal that erupted in its retail bank more than two years ago,” all in an effort to assure regulators that it’s fixing the problems that led to the scandal – WSJ

Just in case those holiday treats are getting the better of you already and you need some motivation to get out and move, check out this fascinating story of ultra-marathoner (and Minnesota-born) Courtney Dauwalter, who’s leveling the playing field between the sexes in her grueling sport of choice – NYTimes