Bloomberg: SEC Denying Record Percentage of Whistleblower Claims

Whistleblower Awards Slow to Trickle as SEC Raises Bar on Claims

The SEC is denying a record percentage of whistleblower claims, including two in orders that sharply rebuked a previous award to billionaire activist investor Carson Block—signs the agency is enforcing rules and scrutinizing claims more strictly than in past years.

The commission, now with a Republican majority, denied awards in 31 consecutive orders issued between April 21 and July 15 – covering at least 55 different tipsters, Bloomberg Law found in a review of all 65 final orders issued this year. It’s the longest drought in the history of the program, which was created by the Dodd-Frank law of 2010 to encourage tips about financial wrongdoing.

Approximately $20 million has been awarded so far this year, including three awards totaling about $9 million that the agency made on July 16, two days after Bloomberg Law asked it about the lack of approvals.

Last year at this time, more than $60 million had been awarded, on the way to $255 million for the year. So far this year, the agency has approved about 13% of all claims, compared to about 37% last year through the end of July.

Ex-Fed Examiner to Pay Out Insider-Trading Gains in SEC Action

A former senior banking supervisor and examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond agreed to pay over half a million dollars in earnings from trades on nonpublic information about Capital One Financial Corp. and New York Community Bancorp Inc., ending an SEC enforcement suit with a consent judgment.

Robert Brian Thompson violated prohibitions around bank securities trading, using information about the banks he supervised to strategically buy and sell shares through a personal brokerage account and generated $585,000 in unlawful profits, according to the SEC enforcement action.

SEC Announces George Botic to Serve as Acting Chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that it has designated George R. Botic to serve as Acting Chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, effective July 23, 2025. Current PCAOB Chair Erica Y. Williams has resigned from the Board, effective July 22, 2025. […]

Mr. Botic is a Certified Public Accountant and became a PCAOB Board Member on October 25, 2023. Prior to joining the Board, he served as the Director of the PCAOB’s Division of Registration and Inspections, where he oversaw the registration and inspection of all domestic and foreign accounting firms that audit public companies whose securities trade in the U.S., as well as all broker-dealer audits. He previously served in various roles at the PCAOB, including as its Director of the Office of International Affairs, Special Advisor to former Chairperson James R. Doty, and Deputy Director of the Registration and Inspections Division. Earlier in his career, Mr. Botic was a Senior Manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers. He is a graduate of Shepherd University and received a Master of Accountancy from Virginia Tech.

Citadel Securities Asks SEC to Tread Cautiously on Tokenization

Citadel Securities wants the US Securities and Exchange Commission to proceed more slowly on allowing “tokenized” securities to take off.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has spoken recently about streamlining traditional securities rules to help companies offer tokenized securities. The result could be investor confusion and an uneven playing field for exchanges and publicly traded companies, Citadel Securities said in a comment letter sent Monday to the SEC’s Crypto Task Force. […]

“Tokenized securities must achieve success by delivering real innovation and efficiency to market participants, rather than through self-serving regulatory arbitrage,” the market-making firm said in its letter.

Instead, the SEC should move forward on tokenization through a formal rule-making process, Citadel Securities said. The SEC declined to comment, “beyond what the chairman had said publicly on this topic,” a spokesperson said via email.

How Bitcoin Found a New Purpose After Crypto Crash

The main reason why Bitcoin is still a “thing” has little to do with payments. What’s pushed it to new stratospheric highs is its embrace by mainstream finance as a supercharged alternative to stocks, bonds, real estate and gold. A growing list of “Bitcoin millionaires” has made others hungry for some of the action, putting investment advisers under pressure to offer their clients some exposure to the digital token. Big financial institutions are now offering Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, marketing them as a tool for investors to diversify their portfolios and hedge against inflation risk.