Back at it.  Let’s get caught up.

Quite a start to the week for consulting powerhouse McKinsey & Co., with a Times expose on the questionable relationship between McKinsey’s clients and the investments its hedge fund has made in those same clients, not to mention the intense secrecy surrounding that arrangement – NYTimes

Then there’s the news that it reached a $15 million settlement with the US Trustee’s Office “over allegations McKinsey failed to adequately disclose possible conflicts of interest in a trio of major bankruptcies” that we’ve been tracking here—Alpha Natural Resources, Westmoreland Coal Co., and SunEdison Inc. – Law360 and WSJ and Bloomberg and NYTimes

The US is pushing China hard to keep the value of its currency stable as an important piece of ongoing trade negotiations between the two countries, a “move aimed at neutralizing any effort by Beijing to devalue its currency to counter American tariffs” – Bloomberg

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, who to this point has largely avoided weighing in on the DOJ’s criminal case against his daughter (and CFO) and his company, has broken his silence and accused the US of acting based on “political motivations” – NYTimes

Meanwhile, Germany is reportedly kicking around the idea of letting Huawei and its 5G technology into the country after an investigatory probe failed to show that “Huawei could use its equipment to clandestinely siphon off data” – WSJ

This week [on the country’s orders], Danske Bank shuttered its troubled Estonia branch office at the heart of a $230 billion money laundering scandal that emerged in 2018 and “announced a retreat from the entire Baltic region as well as Russia” – Bloomberg and Law360

The SEC is working on a plan that would allow companies to privately discuss potential IPO plans with investors before announcing their public offering, a “test the waters” strategy that the agency has previously only allowed for “smaller, emerging companies” – WSJ and Bloomberg

According to a former PCAOB accountant who left the Board to join KPMG, the “Big Four auditing powerhouse began pressing him for regulatory secrets starting on his first day on the job”—a key admission for the DOJ in its case against a pair of former regulators and three KPMG partners – Law360

More fun for PM May, as Honda announced plans to join a rising exodus of companies that are leaving the UK in favor of new operations in Europe as Brexit fast approaches. For the Japanese automaker, that means shuttering a production factory in Swindon, England that employs some 3500 workers – NYTimes

Royal Park Investments has lost another bid for class certification in its suit against BNY Mellon over toxic RMBS. SDNY Judge Gregory Woods found that the investors’ claims “did not satisfy class action commonality requirements” – Law360

The Quadriga cryptocurrency exchange mystery deepens, and customers are taking the hunt for their coinage into their own hands – WSJ and Law360

If you saw any of the committee testimony from Facebook reps over the past year, you wouldn’t be surprised that the results of British parliamentary committee’s 18-month-long investigation of the social networking site and online misinformation are “scathing, . . . accusing the company of breaking data privacy and competition laws and calling for new regulations to rein in the technology industry” – NYTimes

It would seem that Quebec’s deep desire to maintain its French-speaking identity and roots may actually have limits: actual French people (or FFFs in the local parlance)  – NYTimes