France Investigating Insider Trading Gang that Courted Business School Students/Future Bankers

Insider-Trading Gang Allegedly Courted Future Rothschild Banker

In a novel twist on insider trading probes, French authorities are investigating a network that allegedly tried to court elite university students and junior bankers, betting they’d one day land top finance jobs and hand over market-moving intelligence.

One of those students would later work for Rothschild & Co. on a secret €2 billion ($2.3 billion) plan by luxury billionaire Bernard Arnault to delist Christian Dior — a deal that never surfaced publicly but still triggered suspicious trades in Paris, Dubai and New York, according to confidential investigative documents.

Authorities say that the relationship between the alleged tipster and the network that recruited him began years earlier, while he was still a student at HEC Paris, one of France’s most prestigious business schools. The group allegedly offered housing help, career advice and even tips on his appearance. Investigators believe they were cultivating a future source deep inside the finance world.

Atkins Treads Familiar Path with Audit Board Leadership Overhaul

SEC Chair Paul Atkins is following a familiar path in his approach to the US audit board: replace its members and force an agenda reset.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a small Washington regulator created out of the ashes of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, is facing its third overhaul in less than 10 years.

That whipsaw in who runs the board and what policies and approach members bring to its mission could set back efforts to update US audit standards, investors fear. Audit industry advocates hope a new roster of leaders could take dramatic steps to reimagine the regulator.

“I don’t think it’s good for the organization, I don’t think it’s good for audit quality,” said Jack Ciesielski, an accounting analyst and president of the investment research firm R.G. Associates. “How can you have institutional memory built up if you have amnesia every four years.”

US appeals court strikes down SEC rule on ‘audit trail’ funding

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down 2023 regulations adopted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on funding a comprehensive market surveillance system, finding that Wall Street’s top regulator had not provided a sufficient basis for allowing stock exchanges to pass on its costs to their members, court papers showed.

The unanimous decision represented another blow to SEC regulations adopted under the Biden administration, which faced concerted opposition from industry and Republican lawmakers. It was also a setback for the Consolidated Audit Trail, a repository of investor and transaction data meant to give regulators overarching visibility into U.S. market operations that has faced delays and obstacles for more than a decade.

The American Securities Association and Citadel Securities, which brought the lawsuit, both hailed the outcome.

Crypto CLARITY: The Politics, Policy and Implications of Digital Assets Regulatory Framework Legislation in the 119th Congress

Introduction

—The second half of July has seen a flurry of legislative activity across the federal government in Washington, D.C., with Congress inching closer to completing a long-awaited effort to pass legislation to establish a framework for the lawful operation of digital asset businesses in the United States.

—On July 17, 2025, the House of Representatives passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY Act; H.R. 3633) by a vote of 294 to 134. The bill would establish a comprehensive market structure framework for digital assets. 216 Republicans voted for the bill along with 78 Democrats.

—On July 22, 2025, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) and Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) released a discussion draft of the Responsible Financial Innovation Act of 2025 (RFIA), which would create an alternative approach to classifying digital assets. The RFIA would establish a larger role for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), over which the Senate Banking Committee has jurisdiction. The Senators also issued a Request for Information (RFI) to solicit stakeholder feedback.

—Unlike the CLARITY Act, the RFIA is not comprehensive legislation, as it does not cover market structure tied to the federal commodities laws and U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), over which the Senate Agriculture Committee has jurisdiction.

—The CLARITY Act and RFIA overlap in some areas but also differ in several important areas, including notably with respect to the role of the SEC in determining an asset’s classification as falling within the federal securities laws or federal commodities laws.

PayPal to Enable Businesses to Accept Bitcoin, Ethereum and Other Cryptocurrencies

PayPal will allow smaller businesses in the U.S. to accept 100 cryptocurrencies on its platform, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana on its network, the payments services provider announced Monday.

Pay with Crypto will enable users to convert crypto to stablecoins or to other fiat currencies, the firm said. It will support transactions for a number of wallets, including Coinbase, Kraken and MetaMask. […]

PayPal users have been able to access crypto since late 2020, after a feature allowed users to buy, sell, and hold four cryptocurrencies—Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin—but not to move the funds to external destinations.