Good morning. A former Citigroup executive sued the bank Monday, alleging that one of its top executives sexually harassed her and that its human resources department was “weaponized” against her in the aftermath.

• The allegations: The suit was filed in Manhattan federal court by Julia Carreon, who worked in Citi’s wealth-management division until 2024. It alleges Andy Sieg, Citi’s head of wealth, publicly displayed sexually charged conduct toward her and failed to refute rumors that they were having an inappropriate relationship.
   
• What she said went on: Carreon in the lawsuit accuses Citi of fostering a decadeslong culture of sexual harassment that reduced her to being perceived as a sex object. Citi Chief Executive Jane Fraser is one of the finance world’s few female CEOs.
   
• Citi’s response: In a statement, a Citi spokesman said the lawsuit “has absolutely no merit and we will demonstrate that through the legal process.” The bank said in court filing Tuesday that Carreon fabricated “a false theory” to avoid an agreement to arbitrate employment-related claims, because a law prohibits the arbitration of sexual harassment claims.

TikTok settles teen mental-health lawsuit before trial.

TikTok settled a lawsuit that alleges social-media platforms designed products meant to addict young people, avoiding a trial in California, according to attorneys for a young woman suing several tech giants.

Jury selection began in the trial in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The case is the first of its kind and will be a landmark test of questions around whether social-media platforms designed features that cause mental-health problems and lead to addiction.

Terms of the settlement were confidential, said Joseph VanZandt, a lawyer with Beasley Allen and co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs.

Move to ease regulatory path for ocean-floor harvesting boosts TMC.

Shares in deep-sea miner The Metals Company climbed last week after the Trump administration eased the application process for companies seeking to harvest minerals from the deep sea. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration early last week finalized a rule that combines deep-sea commercial and exploratory applications into one to streamline the process, reports Yusuf Khan for Risk Journal. The aim is to cut the number of environmental assessment and public comment periods needed before companies can mine the deep ocean.

After the rule change, The Metals Company, a Canadian-listed deep-sea mining company with a U.S. subsidiary, filed the first consolidated mining application to mine rocks known as nodules from a 40,000-mile stretch of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico. 

• The European Union will tell Alphabet’s Google how to give competitors access to search data and Android AI tools as it prepares guidance on complying with the bloc’s digital-competition rulebook.
   
• Kirkland & Ellis is withdrawing as counsel to Optimum Communications after the telecom company filed an antitrust lawsuit against lenders that are also among the law firm’s clientele in the asset-management industry.
   
• The criminal trial of two luxury real-estate brokers and their brother kicked off Tuesday with prosecutors portraying them as wealthy sex traffickers, while their lawyers said they were being unfairly persecuted for a youthful sex-fueled lifestyle.
   
• The European Union is drafting new sanctions against Iran in response to its crackdown on protesters that killed thousands by official accounts, according to Risk Journal.
   
• Risk Journal reports that more than 760 vehicles exported from the European Union and officially declared for Turkey, Armenia, Georgia or Kazakhstan ended up in Russia, circumventing EU sanctions, according to the European Anti-Fraud Office.
   
• Netflix paid $1.12 billion in income taxes to the U.S. government in 2025, information that companies haven’t typically disclosed—until now. The streaming giant became one of the first large public companies to file an annual report that complied with a new accounting rule requiring more detail about corporate tax payments.
   
• Hungary and Slovakia, both heavily dependent on Russian energy imports, vowed to legally challenge newly adopted European Union regulations after the bloc formally greenlighted its  plan to phase out all Russian pipeline gas imports in 2027, Risk Journal reports.

Join us in New York on March 4 for the inaugural Dow Jones Risk Journal Summit.

Speakers include Kaitlin Asrow, acting superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services; Erika Brown Lee, head of global data privacy legal, Citi; Beth Collins, chief compliance officer, Walmart; Indrani Franchini, chief compliance officer, IBM; and Kevin O’Connor, general counsel, Lockheed Martin.

Request a complimentary invitation here using the code COMPLIMENTARY. Attendance is limited, and all requests are subject to approval.

EU and India reach free-trade deal as world responds to Trump tariffs.

India and the European Union have reached a free-trade agreement that will open a new market for European cars and other products, showing how the world’s middle powers are expanding alliances in response to President Trump’s tariffs.

Impact: The deal, announced Tuesday, is set to link almost two billion consumers across the two economies, making it the biggest free-trade agreement by population that the EU has concluded. It is the latest example of U.S. trading partners seeking to curb their reliance on America by expanding ties with other markets. 

• Stung by Trump, America’s Top Trading Partners Shift Gaze to China
• U.S. Warns Korea Against Targeting American Tech Firms Amid Trade Escalation
• Canada’s Carney Tells Trump ‘I Meant What I Said’ in Davos
• Europe Got Tough With Trump, but It Needs the U.S. as Much as Ever

• Congress is running out of time to pass a sprawling appropriations package before current funding for much of the federal government expires at 12:01 a.m. ET on Saturday. Senate Democrats said they won’t support the bill without changes to the provisions regarding the Department of Homeland Security, raising the risk of a partial government shutdown this weekend.
   
• Iran shut off the internet and blocked communications, trying to keep the world in the dark about the deadly wave of violence it used to crush antigovernment protests. Now as rights groups investigate, they say they are uncovering evidence that the death toll is far higher than they originally thought, with some projecting it will top 10,000.
   
• Consumer confidence dropped in January to the lowest level recorded by The Conference Board’s survey in more than a decade, a warning sign that a relatively steady stretch of economic data may yet prove fragile.
   
• Federal Reserve officials this week are expected to stop cutting interest rates for the first time since September, holding steady after three consecutive reductions. The harder question is what it would take to start again.
   
• Pinterest said it would cut up to about 15% of its workforce, or roughly 700 jobs, as part of a restructuring aimed at pivoting resources toward higher-growth areas such as artificial intelligence.
   
• The risk of Tim Cook’s strategy for navigating Washington came into clear focus Saturday night. As the world’s attention turned to Minneapolis following the death of Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration agents, the Apple chief executive was at the White House feting President Trump and the first lady.
   
• President Trump warned Tuesday that his administration would no longer support Iraq if Nouri al-Maliki is elected as the country’s next prime minister.

Explore The Wall Street Journal: From Headlines to Action

Join us on Jan. 29 for a deep dive into the challenges that CFOs and other top executives are seeking to overcome, including the impact of tariffs and geopolitical conflicts on corporate finance and private equity.

Have a question you’d like to submit in advance? Send your question to wsjcorporate@dowjones.com and we’ll address your questions during the Q&A.

• President Trump defended Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem amid criticism of her job performance and frustration inside the White House over how she responded to last weekend’s fatal shooting in Minnesota.
   

• Wall Street believed the Trump administration was going to take a friendly approach to Medicare insurers. Now, investors think the industry might be in for a rough ride.
   
• The U.S. government’s dramatic immigration restrictions have slowed population growth to the lowest levels since the Covid pandemic, new federal data show.
   
• Amazon.com said it would cut around 16,000 corporate employees, the latest step in the technology giant’s efforts to slim down its workforce.