In order to comply with European antitrust rulings against it earlier this year, Google announced that for the first time it will begin charging telephone handset manufacturers to install Gmail, Google Maps, and other popular Android apps within the EU – NYTimes and WSJ

Uber, still working on its forthcoming IPO, is reportedly focused on a valuation of $120 billion in an offering that could come in the second half of 2019 – WSJ and Bloomberg

Meanwhile, chief Uber rival Lyft is a bit further down the road, having chosen JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, and Jefferies Group to lead its own IPO in early 2019, with its sights set on a $15.1 billion valuation – WSJ and NYTimes

Earnings season for the US’s biggest banks wrapped yesterday.  Here’s an overview of a generally positive key takeaways from Q3 – Bloomberg

The SEC, after an incredible 12 years of legal wrangling, has ruled that the NYSE and Nasdaq haven’t justified their proposed price increases for certain market data—the first time the Agency has rejected a fee increase for the exchanges’ “must lucrative class of stock-market data feeds” – WSJ and Bloomberg

Breakingviews suggests that, though Goldman’s numbers are booming, new CEO David Solomon has a major challenge ahead of him: motivating his workforce of just shy of 40,000 to become more productive in order to keep up with competitors’ output – NYTimes

Royal Park Investments is pushing SDNY Judge Alison Nathan to overturn a magistrate judge’s decision that denied its bid to allow loan-sampling-related discovery in its toxic-RMBS suit against trustee Deutsche Bank. Which matters, as Law360 explains, because “While sampling has previously been endorsed as a valid method for establishing liability in case brought against other parties in the securitization process,” parties have “run into difficulty when trying to use it in RMBS trustee cases because courts have read trust governing agreements as carving out more limited duties for trustees that call for action only when trustee have information about specific loans” – Law360

Reports of the US’s mind-boggling $780 billion federal deficit—an increase of 17% from last year—have prompted Marketplace to ask how much US debt is too much? – Marketplace

The White House continued its unusually public criticism of Jay Powell’s Federal Reserve on Tuesday, dubbing the central bank its “biggest threat” due to rising interest rates – WSJ

Mocking tweets aside, a NY federal judge has officially signed off on the $40 million Musk/Tesla settlement with the SEC over allegations that Elon’s tweeting misled investors about plans to take the automaker private – Law360

Volkswagen luxury division Audi has agreed to pay a “substantial fine” of roughly $930 million in Germany for its role in a seemingly boundless emissions-cheating scandal. The agreement resolves civil claims against the company, but prosecutors in Munich clarified that it has no impact on their criminal investigation of Audi execs – NYTimes

Nomura Holding America has agreed to pay $480 million to settle DOJ claims that it “misled investors about risks associated with more than $13 billion worth of loans” packaged into RMBS between 2006 and 2007 – Law360

We’ve been remembering Sears’ legacy this week as the historic retailer entered Chapter 11 protection, and NPR gives us this perhaps-unexpected look at the “revolutionary” role that the famed Sears catalog played in the lives of African-Americans in the Jim Crow era – NPR