Opioid maker Purdue Pharma and members of the controlling Sackler family have offered to settle thousands of lawsuits against the company for $10bn-$12bn, Phillip Morris International is in talks to merge with Altria in a deal that would create the world’s largest tobacco group, UK opposition parties agree to pursue legislation to prevent a no-deal Brexit, the Federal Reserve is forced to re-assert that “political considerations play absolutely no role” in policymaking and Amazon and Microsoft go unchallenged in a $10bn Pentagon cloud computing contract. Plus, the FT’s global finance correspondent Robin Wigglesworth explains why investors are concerned that the world economy is succumbing to “Japanification”. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.