Business News at a Glance

Links to Saudi Arabia Leave the Chief of SoftBank in a Tight Spot

Since the disappearance of a dissident journalist in Istanbul, some of the most powerful figures in business are distancing themselves from Saudi Arabia. There is one prominent exception: Masayoshi Son, chief executive of the SoftBank Group. Son, the founder of SoftBank, the Japanese internet, energy and financial conglomerate that owns Sprint, is one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest business partners. An investment conference that was to be a triumphant display of the kingdom’s economic modernization has instead become a painful referendum on its human-rights record. As of Wednesday, Son had not publicly said whether he would attend the conference, which is scheduled for next week in Riyadh.

Trump Seeks Trade Talks With Former TPP Partners to Squeeze China

Fresh off securing trade agreements with South Korea, Canada and Mexico, President Donald Trump is embarking on a new plan: refashioning the Trans-Pacific Partnership to his liking through a flurry of bilateral trade deals. Trump, who pulled the United States out of the trade pact with 11 other countries, is now looking to forge deeper trade ties with several of the nations in the alliance, as well as the European Union and the United Kingdom. Trump views these new bilateral agreements as a way to contain Beijing’s growing economic, geopolitical and territorial ambitions.

U.S. Opts Not to Call China a Currency Manipulator

The Trump administration is eagerly embracing a trade war with China, but on Wednesday, it opted once again not to label that nation a currency manipulator despite President Donald Trump’s repeated complaint that Beijing is weakening the renminbi. The Treasury Department’s biannual currency exchange report, the fourth of Trump’s presidency, criticized China’s trade and currency practices but still did not conclude that the Chinese government was improperly devaluing the renminbi. Along with China, the Treasury Department said that Germany, India, Japan, Korea and Switzerland would remain on its “monitoring list” for potential manipulation.

Fed Plans to Continue on Path to Raise Rates

The strength of economic growth, thanks in part to the tax cuts President Donald Trump championed last year, is prompting Federal Reserve officials to consider the need to prevent the economy from overheating for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, according to the minutes of the September meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee that were released Wednesday. Most Fed officials predicted in September that the Fed would raise its benchmark interest rate above 3 percent by the second half of 2019. The Fed raised its benchmark rate by a quarter point in September to a range between 2 percent and 2.25 percent.

Post-Crisis Oversight Wanes With Release of Prudential

The Trump administration said on Wednesday that Prudential Financial, the giant insurer, would no longer be subject to stricter federal oversight, bringing to zero the number of financial firms outside the banking system that face such scrutiny. The Financial Stability Oversight Council said it was removing the “systemically important financial institution” — or SIFI — label from Prudential after similar moves allowed American International Group, MetLife and GE Capital to escape the designation. The council applies the SIFI designation to financial firms whose collapse it believes can pose a serious threat to the financial system. On Wednesday, the council said Prudential no longer posed such a threat.

Treasury Officer Charged With Leaking Reports on Manafort

Federal authorities arrested a Treasury Department official on Wednesday and charged her with illegally showing a journalist secret reports about suspicious wire transfers by President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and others. The Treasury official, Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, was arrested near Washington. She was charged with one count of unauthorized disclosure of the so-called suspicious activity reports, which banks use to flag potentially problematic transactions to authorities, and one count of conspiracy to disclose the reports. Her lawyer, Peter Greenspun, declined to comment. The case is part of a crackdown by the Trump administration on leaks to journalists.

Founder of Craigslist, a Villain to Newspapers, Tries to Save Journalism

In the late 1990s, Craig Newmark, a former IBM programmer, built a service that allowed people to find apartments, jobs, computer parts, sexual partners, rides out of town and all sorts of other things through the internet. Craigslist was fast, free and popular. Newspaper income from classifieds immediately plummeted. Now Newmark is among a gaggle of technology moguls who are riding to the rescue of the beleaguered East Coast media. On Wednesday, New York Public Radio announced a $2.5 million gift from Newmark to expand its newsroom. That brings his total philanthropic efforts involving media in the last year to $50 million.