The City of London has denied Uber’s request to extend its license in the city over concerns for rider safety. The decision puts Uber’s 45,000 drivers there in limbo, though they’ll be able to continue operating while the company appeals the decision – Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ

Two possible deals that we discussed in the past few weeks have been sealed, with Charles Schwab forking over $26 billion to acquire rival TD Ameritrade and LMVH ponying up $16 billion to add Tiffany & Co. to its luxury portfolio – Bloomberg and Bloomberg and Law360 and NYTimes and NYTimes and WSJ and WSJ

Promised effects of the 2017 tax cuts be damned, US companies are dramatically reducing their capital investment spending, with many “postpon[ing] or shelv[ing] otherwise promising projects” in the face of economic uncertainty, a pullback that “could pose a continuing drag on economic growth” – WSJ

Which puts all the more pressure on consumers—and a certain Friday rapidly approaching—to keep the U.S. economy humming along – Bloomberg

Meanwhile, here are some numbers to give a sense for just how much the U.S.’s largest companies, Apple and Microsoft, affect the Dow – WSJ

We appear to have some movement in the US/China trade war stalemate, with new reporting this weekend suggesting that China has agreed to raise penalties on theft of intellectual property in an effort to jumpstart negotiations. As usual, additional details were few – Bloomberg

Samsung will pay $75 million to resolve allegations that its shipbuilding unit “funneled millions of dollars in bribes to executives at Brazil’s state owned oil company [Petrobras] to secure a lucrative contract for a client” – Law360

One beneficiary of the tragedies surrounding Boeing’s 737 Max disasters appears to be Lion Air, the carrier that suffered the first of the Max-related crashes last year. How could that possibly be so? Consider Lion Air’s own shoddy safety record that’s been almost entirely ignored in light of the significant focus on Boeing – NYTimes

A fascinating look at the work that Mpls Fed president Neel Kashkari is doing—with the help of new hire Abigail Wozniak, an Obama-era member of the Council of Economic Advisors—to help transform the central bank’s focus on economic opportunity and inequality – Bloomberg

Drug giant Novartis is closing in on a deal to buy cholesterol-drug maker The Medicines Co. for nearly $7 billion, a move that the Journal’s dubbed an “expensive bid to expand its reach in the lucrative market for heart treatments” – WSJ

Former comedian and now-media mogul Byron Allen hasn’t been shy in casting a wide net in his self-declared civil rights crusade against corporate America, including a $20 billion lawsuit against Comcast. He also hasn’t exactly been making friends along the way – NYTimes

Major players in the financial world, including investors like BlackRock, Fidelity, and Pimco, have warned the White House that its push to take Fannie & Freddie private could significantly disrupt “a market critical to the U.S. housing system” – WSJ

Juul has attempted to make the case for its continued existence by pointing to its potential role as an anti-smoking tool. But interviews with former execs and docs from investigations and lawsuits show that the company aggressively marketed its e-cigarettes to the nascent youth vaping market – NYTimes

A bit of science Monday for all of us with this look at the significance of the mysterious extrachromosomal DNA loops that are “surprisingly common in cancer cells and play a bigger role in many types of cancers than was previously recognized” – NYTimes