Former congressman George Santos will pay more than $35,000 to settle a regulator’s claim that he manipulated wagers on prediction market Kalshi over whether he would attend the State of the Union. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Friday that Santos made over $17,000 by making timely bets on his attendance at the president’s annual address to Congress. The regulator…
It is not certain that every trade on US politics funded from a US-based crypto exchange is done by a US-based trader, but it is certain that some of them are (because those people keep getting arrested for insider trading!). As a legal matter, Polymarket is not allowed to take bets from US customers on its main exchange; as a…
In a way, Mr. Trump’s cryptocurrency windfall is a reflection of the speculative nature of the nascent industry, in which executives behind these often highly volatile ventures are at times able to generate huge profits at the expense of smaller investors, who often lose vast sums on experimental coins. Former federal financial regulators said Mr. Trump has taken that to…
It’s not every day that a Big Law chief executive declares the traditional law firm model will perish. Nor do general counsels from major companies often publicly state Big Law firms risk losing their competitive edge. And yet, we heard both of those warning shots this week. It’s a sign that legal leaders believe artificial intelligence is quickly changing the…
But beneath the spectacle lies something most retail investors do not understand: this IPO is structurally unlike any public offering that has come before it, and not merely because of its size. It is different because of a purpose-built and dangerous loophole. In the weeks before the deal, the Nasdaq rewrote the rulebook governing one of the most important stock…
One of the more noteworthy recent trends in corporate law has been the push for companies (particularly companies incorporated in Delaware) to consider reincorporating elsewhere (primarily Texas or Nevada). A number of companies have in fact changed their state of incorporation. Arguably the biggest move of all is ExxonMobil’s recent action to reincorporate in Texas, which the company’s shareholders approved…
President Donald Trump has pardoned former U.S. Representative Stephen Buyer, an Indiana Republican, who was convicted of securities fraud ?for engaging in insider trading in 2018 as a T-Mobile US ?consultant ahead of a $23 billion merger with Sprint. The proclamation, issued on Thursday and announced by the White House on Friday, gave no specific rationale for the pardon other…
Great, sure. Every headline about this says “insider trading,” but I don’t think this is insider trading? Santos had no obligation of confidentiality to anyone to keep his State of the Union plans confidential; therefore he was free to trade on them. Or perhaps I am wrong; this is all a very new and stupid area of law. But I…
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is ending an almost 30-year-old policy that forbade companies and individuals from airing their grievances or denying wrongdoing after they settled enforcement cases with the derivatives regulator. The so-called gag rule, in place since 1998, will be revoked as soon as the policy update is published in the Federal Register, the agency said Wednesday. “The…
The new chair of the US audit board warned Thursday that despite its successful track record, the industry watchdog must modernize its approach to regulation, and prepare for rapid changes in technology and shifting market demands. Demetrios Logothetis, who took the helm of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board earlier this year, made the case for change in remarks to…