Nissan’s chairman faces criminal charges over secret compensation

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Carlos Ghosn faces criminal investigation 

Nissan announced this morning that it planned to remove Mr. Ghosn as its chairman, saying an internal investigation had found that for years he underreported his salary by millions of dollars and committed other acts of “misconduct.”

Nissan said it was working with the Japanese authorities. According to news reports, prosecutors are preparing to arrest Mr. Ghosn.

The developments could bring about a swift fall for Mr. Ghosn, who made his name by rescuing Nissan from dire financial straits almost two decades ago and forging partnerships with Renault and Mitsubishi to create an international car giant.

Shares in Nissan and Renault, where Mr. Ghosn is chairman and C.E.O., are down by about 10 percent in European trading.

The U.S. and China aren’t budging in their trade fight

Last week, it looked like trade tensions might finally ease between Beijing and Washington. But Vice President Mike Pence and President Xi Jinping of China both defended the practices of their countries on Saturday at an Asia-Pacific trade meeting in Papua New Guinea. And then, Damien Cave of the NYT writes, they “dug in and refused to compromise.”

The WSJ reports that midlevel Chinese officials sought to block the publishing of a statement from the meeting because they believed a phrase — “We agreed to fight protectionism including all unfair trade practices” — unfairly singled out their country’s activities. Ultimately, nothing was published.

The NYT notes that failure to make any progress during the talks left world leaders increasingly exasperated. “The entire world is worried,” said Prime Minister Peter O’Neill of Papua New Guinea, who led the talks.

The event suggests that no truce between China and the U.S. is imminent. And it sets up a high-stakes showdown at the Group of 20 conference in Argentina this month, which Mr. Xi and President Trump are expected to attend.

Mark Zuckerberg tried to rally his employees

In an hourlong videoconference question-and-answer session with employees on Friday afternoon, Facebook’s C.E.O. fiercely defended his company and pushed back against an investigation from the NYT. He said claims that he and Sheryl Sandberg had sought to conceal warning signs of looming crises were wrong.

(Some parts of the NYT’s report have been confirmed. Facebook’s former chief security officer wrote in the WaPo: “Yup, Sheryl Sandberg yelled at me.” She apparently later apologized.)

The WSJ reports that Mr. Zuckerberg considers the social network “at war” as a result of its recent tussles with lawmakers, investors and users, and that he has been trying to act more decisively as a leader.

A big part of that now appears focused on bolstering employee morale, which reports have suggested is falling. During his Q. and A., Mr. Zuckerberg said that leaks to reporters were often caused by “issues with morale.” Staff members were encouraged to keep working on the company’s problems despite media scrutiny.

More Facebook news: The company’s scandals have strained the relationship between Democrats and Silicon Valley. And here’s a look at some of the tactics used by Definers, the P.R. agency that Facebook fired last week.

Theresa May hopes business support can save her Brexit deal

The British prime minister still faces daunting odds: Getting her proposal for Britain’s departure from the E.U. through Parliament will be tough. She’s now betting that British companies will convince skeptical lawmakers to back a deal they dislike.

Mrs. May is scheduled to meet with the Confederation of British Industry, a trade group, today. She hopes to collect support from businesses who think that an imperfect deal at least offers some certainty compared to a no-deal Brexit. She will also head to Brussels again this week to continue talks with E.U. officials.

But lawmakers from her Conservative Party who favor a cleaner break from the E.U. remain dissatisfied, and they may yet move to oust her. They almost certainly won’t be pleased by E.U. negotiators floating the idea of extending Britain’s transition out of the bloc until 2022.

Why Michael Bloomberg is giving $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins

The businessman said yesterday that he would give $1.8 billion to his alma mater to make the school “forever need-blind.” It’s believed to be the single biggest private donation to higher education in modern times.

The donation is meant to let Johns Hopkins offer more financial aid to students in the form of scholarship grants instead of loans. “Our dedicated financial aid endowment was simply too small,” the school’s president, Ronald Daniels, told the WaPo. Now, he added, “We will be fully and permanently need-blind in our admissions.”

In an NYT Op-Ed, Mr. Bloomberg explained his rationale:

A recent analysis by The Times found that at dozens of America’s elite colleges, more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent of that scale — even though many of those lower-income students have the qualifications to get in.

And until recently, by some estimates, half of all high-achieving low- and middle-income students have not even been applying to top colleges — largely because they believe they can’t afford it, doubt they’ll be accepted, or aren’t even aware of their options.

Tim Cook says the free market isn’t helping protect privacy

In an interview with Axios, Apple’s C.E.O. argued that without sufficient regulation of the technology industry, some tech companies appear to have failed to protect consumers:

“Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of regulation. I’m a big believer in the free market. But we have to admit when the free market is not working. And it hasn’t worked here. I think it’s inevitable that there will be some level of regulation. I think the Congress and the administration at some point will pass something.”

The comment is another effort by Mr. Cook to distance Apple, which focuses on selling hardware, from companies like Facebook and Google that make money from selling ads based on user data.

He also argued that tech companies should embrace regulation. “This is not a matter of privacy versus profits, or privacy versus technical innovation,” he said. “That’s a false choice.”

Beijing didn’t like the West’s playbook. So it wrote its own.

In the years after Mao’s death, China had to recover from decades of political and economic turmoil. More than three-quarters of the population lived in extreme poverty.

Today, China leads the world in its number of homeowners, internet users, college graduates and — by some counts — billionaires. Extreme poverty has fallen to less than 1 percent of the population. An isolated, impoverished country has evolved into the most significant rival to the United States since the fall of the Soviet Union.

To explain that drastic shift, the NYT has put together a series of in-depth articles that delve into China’s meteoric rise. The series will run this week and next, online, as well as in an extra Friday edition of DealBook and in a special section in Sunday’s newspaper.

Take a sneak peek at ESPN’s new series on LeBron’s business empire

The new eight-part documentary is a showcase for the basketball star and media-mogul entrepreneur. It tells the story of how he and three of his closest friends — Maverick Carter, Rich Paul and Randy Mims — created a kingdom that now includes a production company and talent agency. (The series will also be a test for ESPN’s new streaming service, ESPN+, which will begin airing the episodes tomorrow.)

“I’ve never really told this story. Even though it’s on ESPN and I play basketball, this is a business story and not a sports story,” Mr. James said in a statement to DealBook. “My guys and I have been scrapping, building and fighting for 16 years to create an entirely new model. I hope this documentary connects with every young, aspiring entrepreneur trying to change the game and refuse to accept the old way doing of things.”

Revolving door

James Brett is leaving J. Crew after just 16 months as C.E.O.

Diane Greene will step down as the head of Google’s cloud-computing unit — reportedly amid tensions with other executives.

Telecom Italia named Luigi Gubitosi as its new C.E.O.

Channing Dungey, the first African-American to lead a U.S. broadcast network, is stepping down as president of ABC Entertainment.

The speed read

Deals

• Can selling off $40 billion of businesses help save G.E.? (FT)
• Jim Ratcliffe, Britain’s richest man, is in talks to buy oil fields from ConocoPhillips. (BBC)
• For the investment firm Dyal Capital, buying direct stakes in private equity firms (and not their funds) is proving lucrative. (WSJ)
• BlackBerry agreed to buy the cybersecurity start-up Cylance for $1.4 billion. (CNBC)
• Beyond Meat, a start-up that makes vegan chicken and beef substitutes, filed for an I.P.O. (Bloomberg)

Politics and policy

• Maxine Waters, the incoming head of the Financial Services Committee of the House of Representatives, appears to be preparing to scrutinize foreign lenders like Deutsche Bank. (Axios)
• Despite simmering opposition among some Democrats to Nancy Pelosi’s becoming speaker of the House, she faces no real opponent yet. (NYT)
• A federal judge ordered the White House to reinstate the press pass of the CNN reporter Jim Acosta. (NYT)
• President Trump continued to express support for Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, despite the C.I.A.’s conclusion that the prince had ordered the killing of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. (NYT)

Trade

• President Trump, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia may now be in control of international oil prices. (Bloomberg Opinion)
• Thailand’s economy is the latest to slow because of trade tensions. (Nikkei Asian Review)
• The London Stock Exchange Group plans to move about 20 percent of its sovereign bond trading business to Italy before Brexit. (FT)
• The trade war has already disrupted the global supply flows of ethanol. (Bloomberg)

Tech

• Clancy, Duke, Bailey, Hazel. They are the names of dogs belonging to Amazon employees — and they were also used as code names for the company’s HQ2 finalists. (WSJ)
• Google may pay more than $100 million to buy 21 acres of land for a huge new campus in San Jose, Calif. (CNBC)
• And the internet company’s relationship with its A.I. subsidiary, DeepMind, may be getting more complicated. (FT)
• Southeast Asia’s digital economy could triple in size, to $240 billion, by 2025. (TechCrunch)
• Marc Benioff of Salesforce defended the company’s contract with the U.S. customs and border authorities. (Recode)

Best of the rest

• Slowing global growth may dampen the threat of rising interest rates. (DealBook)
• The global bond and stock markets have shrunk by $5 trillion so far this year, the largest contraction of capital markets since the financial crisis. (FT)
• Disney is spending more on theme parks than it did on acquiring Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm combined. (NYT)
• The 401(k) is 40 years old! Now, can we fix it?
• The NYT has a special section dedicated to the business of luxury. (NYT)
• Has Warren Buffett lost his mojo? (Bloomberg Opinion)

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.

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