Economy
The European Commission is considering fining France as much as $5B over its failure to cut its budget deficit. France was granted two extra years by EU officials last June to bring its deficit below a 3% EU limit after missing an end-2013 deadline. France has now said it will miss the 2015 deadline too. A decision on a fine could come within the next two weeks, after the Commission announces its assessments of euro zone countries' draft 2015 budgets on Monday.

The DOJ collected a record $24.7B in penalties from civil and criminal actions in fiscal year 2014, as fines against banks for financial misconduct soared. "It shows the fruits of the Justice Department’s tireless work in enforcing federal laws...and in holding financial institutions accountable for their roles in causing the 2008 financial crisis,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. Collections from civil and criminal actions were $8B in 2013, and $13B in 2012.

Stocks
Jack Ma has announced that Alibaba will set up an international version of its e-commerce marketplace Taobao to serve buyers worldwide in multiple languages, including English and Chinese. Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) currently has an international e-commerce platform specializing in wholesale goods called Aliexpress but does not have an international offering for consumers to sell to each other. Meanwhile, the company is also selling its first-ever bond offering today, a giant trade expected to be around $8B in size.

Wal-Mart says it is no longer matching prices from marketplace vendors or third-party sellers and will limit the list of retailers it matches to 30, including Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Best Buy (NYSE:BBY). The retailer says customers have been using fake listings to obtain discounts and saw fit to tighten its policy. Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) only began matching online retailers last week in a bid to remain competitive in what has become an extremely promotional shopping environment.

Per the terms of a new 5-year deal with Mozilla, Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), whose search engine is powered by Bing (NASDAQ:MSFT), will provide "the default search experience for Firefox in the U.S. on mobile and desktop." The deal also "provides a framework for exploring future product integrations and distribution opportunities to other markets." Google (GOOG, GOOGL), which has long been Firefox's default search provider until now, renewed its last deal with Mozilla in 2011.

Apple will bundle the subscription music service it bought from Beats into its iOS operating system early next year, marking the company's first big jump into subscription music, at a time when downloads from iTunes are in decline. The move could happen as early as next March, FT reports. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) bought Beats in May for $3B.

Salesforce -4.8% premarket after issuing guidance that missed analyst estimates. The company expects FQ4 revenue of $1.436B-$1.441B and EPS of $0.13-$0.14, below a consensus of $1.45B and $0.15. Preliminary FY16 (ends Jan. '16) revenue guidance of $6.45B-$6.5B (+20%-21% Y/Y) is also below a $6.66B consensus, however, Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) has a history of offering conservative initial full-year guidance.

Citigroup is looking into selling its index business, including the World Government Bond Index, which Citi (NYSE:C) calls its flagship. Big banks are increasingly looking to exit index benchmarking as regulators increase their scrutiny, looking at issues such as transparency and potential conflicts of interest. Morningstar reports that about $174B in exchange traded fund and mutual fund assets track Citigroup indexes.

Sanofi is expecting to launch 18 new drugs by 2020, a move that the company says could boost sales by up to €30B ($37.6B) over five years. Sanofi (NYSE:SNY) execs will lay out the strategy for bringing the new drugs to market later today, in a bid to win over investors surprised at the sudden ouster of its chief executive and problems in the field of diabetes.

Airbus has received a hefty order from Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) for 50 long-haul, wide-bodied jets. The price tag on the order fetches roughly $14B. Delta will split the order between the all-new Airbus (OTCPK:EADSY) A350-900 and the revamped A330neo.

Takata will face a U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing later today, where company officials, two automakers, the NHTSA and a crash victim will testify. Key questions include whether Takata (OTCPK:TKTDY) knew of and hid the defects before alerting automakers and regulators and whether a full nationwide recall is needed. Two U.S. Senators have also called a news conference for today with the sister of someone who died in an Arizona accident in 2003 - potentially a sixth fatality linked to air bag defect.

Arizona has broken away from a group of 48 state attorneys general that has been pursuing a multistate investigation over GM's (NYSE:GM) record number of recalls this year, NYT reports. "General Motors represented that it was taking care of the safety of its cars, and in fact there were serious defects that it did not disclose to the public for years," says Attorney General Thomas Horne. Horne is claiming that the automaker defrauded the state’s consumers of an estimated $3B.

Today's Markets:

In Asia, Japan +0.1% to 17301. Hong Kong -0.1% to 23350. China +0.1% to 2453. India +0.1% to 28068.
In Europe, at midday, London -0.7%. Paris -1.1%. Frankfurt -0.6%.
Futures at 6:20: Dow -0.3%. S&P -0.4%. Nasdaq -0.4%. Crude -0.4% to $74.32. Gold -0.1% to $1192.90.
Ten-year Treasury Yield -5 bps to 2.32%

Today's economic calendar:

8:30 Consumer Price Index
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
9:00 PMI Manufacturing Index Flash
9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
10:00 Philly Fed Business Outlook
10:00 Existing Home Sales
10:00 Leading Indicators
10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory

Notable earnings before today's open: BBY, BKE, BONT, BRC, CYBX, DATE, DCI, DLTR, GLOG, JKS, LQDT, MBLY, PDCO, PERY, PLCE, SMRT, SPB, WBAI

Notable earnings after today's close: ADSK, ARUN, ASYS, GEOS, GME, GPS, INTU, MENT, MRVL, NGVC, RENN, ROST, SPLK, TFM, WAIR, ZOES