IIA President and CEO Richard Chambers discusses new thought leadership from the Anti-Fraud Collaboration that explores the need to "trust but verify." Regarding automatic assumptions, he cautions, "Distrust fosters distrust: Auditors who seem suspicious soon find that they have clients who don't trust them."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was unable to strike an agreement with the White House on a pared-down pandemic relief package Wednesday, and Democrats called off plans for a vote on the legislation. Both sides indicated talks would continue, after House leaders released a $2.2 trillion package, having scaled back a $3.4 trillion plan developed in May.

Activity has picked up in mergers and acquisitions, with transactions passing $1 trillion worldwide during the third quarter, according to Refinitiv. However, activity fell 21% year over year during the first nine months of 2020 to $2.2 trillion.

The chairs of Societe Generale and Banco Santander have criticised the European Central Bank's request for banks to pause dividends. They say it makes the banking sector less attractive to investors, reduces competitiveness with US rivals and discourages lending.

Some Federal Reserve officials are concerned the central bank has not stated how it would cope with asset bubbles and excessive risk caused by its low-interest-rate policy. Some worry that by not addressing the issue, the Fed leaves room for doubt that it will maintain low rates after the coronavirus pandemic has passed.

BlackRock has introduced a swap-based equity exchange-traded fund, despite criticism of such products previously from CEO Larry Fink.

Banks including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are anticipating the prospect of an unclear outcome from the US presidential election, which could disrupt markets for weeks. Several banks are running simulations to test their response to spikes in liquidity and credit risk.

Barclays has named Taalib Shaah chief risk officer, CS Venkatakrishnan global head of markets and Paul Compton global head of banking, amid questions about a successor for CEO Jes Staley.

The biggest technical outage since 1999 has halted trading for all of today on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The exchange has attributed the interruption to a system error and has not confirmed whether trading would resume Friday.

In a ruling that could inflame trade tensions between the EU and the US, the World Trade Organisation has authorised retaliatory tariffs from the EU on $4 billion in exports from the US, sources say, a result of a long-running dispute over subsidies for Boeing. It is unclear whether the EU will act immediately or wait until after the US presidential election.