Some U.S. tech firms are finding ways to get around the White House’s Huawei no fly zone, with Micron, Qualcomm, and Intel leading the way – Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ

Meanwhile, a more cautious Chinese consumer appears to be weakening President Xi’s hand as he prepares to talk trade with the U.S. on the sidelines of the forthcoming G-20 summit in Japan – WSJ

Fed Chair Powell felt the need to proclaim the central bank’s independence at a Council on Foreign Relations event yesterday in response to continuing White House attacks over the past week – NYTimes and WSJ

Predictably, his comments helped drive stocks down on Tuesday and will likely prompt another round of criticism from the Administration – WSJ and Bloomberg

Now that we’re a day removed from announcement of the big AbbVie/Allergan mashup, we’re starting to get some industry feedback on the deal – Bloomberg and WSJ and MarketWatch

Merrill Lynch’s commodities arm has agreed to resolve CFTC and DOJ allegations that a pair of its traders engaged in spoofing in the market for precious metals futures contracts. Merrill Lynch will pay a combined $36.5 million  and admit fault as part of the deal – Law360

BuzzFeed chair Kenneth Lerer, a “prolific investor who helped found HuffPost” is out, though his investment fund Lerer Hippeau will maintain its stake in BuzzFeed for now. BuzzFeed declined to comment on Lerer’s departure – NYTimes

Sneakers. Laugh all you want, but thanks to StockX—a “site that treats coveted consumer goods like sneakers as tradable commodities”—the shoes on [some of] our feet are part of a growing marketplace for sneakerheads that has helped turn the site into a billion-dollar venture – NYTimes

Glossy mag giant Conde Nast has sold its bimonthly fashion title W, “one of three publications the company put up for sale last year in the face of significant financial losses that forced it to adopt a series of cost-cutting measures.”  W buyer Future Media has ousted current EIC Stefano Tonchi in favor of the magazine’s style director, Sara Moonves, as part of the deal – NYTimes

A UK jury has found former UBS compliance officer Fabiana Abdel-Malek and Day Trader Walid Choucair guilty on three counts of insider trading related to shares of Kabel Deutschland Holding AG, BRE Properties Inc. and Targa Resources Corp. – WSJ and Law360

Mitsubishi has closed a deal to acquire Bombardier’s Regional Jet Unit for $550 million “in a transaction that puts the companies on different paths in the aviation sector” – WSJ

I have one friend in mind who regularly rivals the out-of-office message featured here for sheer entertainment value, but by and large, this is way high on my OOO list – Marketplace