• Major political factors that could clamp down on cross-border deals include limits on Chinese acquirers; “Brexit” and the North Korean standoff; and a more nationalistic American stance on foreign takeovers.

The Weinstein Company is under civil investigation

The New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has opened an inquiry into the embattled studio and whether allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment against Harvey Weinstein reflect broad gender discrimination and other civil rights violations. The inquiry will also examine whether the company bears financial responsibility for any misconduct.

Civil investigations of this kind have proved costly for companies in the past:

In 2015, ConEd was required to pay $3.8 million to hundreds of female employees after an investigation by the attorney general and federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found violations of sexual discrimination and harassment dating back nearly a decade. (NYT)

Employees of the Weinstein Company are calling for it to release them from their nondisclosure agreements so they can openly discuss what it has been like to work there. Zelda Perkins, a former Miramax employee, broke her contract to talk to The FT about her experience, saying she wanted to show how secretive legal processes were used to silence victims of sexual harassment:

“Unless somebody does this there won’t be a debate about how egregious these agreements are and the amount of duress that victims are put under.”

TPG Growth investing in data start-up with African roots

Image Gro founder and C.E.O. Sara Menker Credit... Gro Intelligence

By investing in Gro Intelligence, which collects and analyzes agricultural data from what it says are trillions of data points, TPG Growth is continuing to pour money into businesses based in, or focused on, Africa.

TPG Growth, which has already invested in five companies across the continent, has been betting that business will pour increasingly more money into Africa. Gro, which is based in New York and Nairobi, Kenya, says it wants to become a Bloomberg of agricultural data, using cloud computing to analyze disparate sources.

• Sara Menker, Gro’s founder and C.E.O., said in a statement: “We want to be a leader in the $5 trillion global agricultural industry.”