Parties to SEC's SolarWinds Case Reach Settlement to "Completely Resolve This Litigation"

SEC Reaches Settlement With SolarWinds Over Sunburst Breach

The Securities and Exchange Commission has reached a settlement with SolarWinds Inc. over the company’s alleged failure to disclose cybersecurity risks prior to its 2020 announcement that it had been the target of a two-yearlong cyberattack.

The parties filed Wednesday a joint motion to stay all pending dates in the SEC’s lawsuit against the company in light of the settlement in principle, according to a settlement letter filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

AIG unit gets partial win in defense cost fight

A Delaware judge ruled Monday that an American International Group Inc. unit does not have to reimburse Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc. for costs it incurred in responding to a tolling agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The tolling agreement was not a covered securities claim under the D&O policies issued to the outdoor advertising company, New Castle County Superior Court Judge Patricia A. Winston said in Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc. v. Illinois National Insurance Co. et al. The judge also said that even if the agreement was a securities claim, it “does not seek redress in response to any corporate act.”

Enron??!??!?

We have talked a few times about Enron Corp., not to be confused with Enron Corp. Last year, someone bought the website and social media accounts of Enron, the energy company that famously went bankrupt because of fraud in 2001. The new Enron exists as an absolutely deadpan combination of jokes (Enron now stands for “Energy, Nurture, Repentant, Opportunity and Nice,” and there are “impossible claims about an egg-shaped nuclear reactor capable of powering a home for a decade”), apparently serious business plans (it seems to be planning a retail power offering in Texas?), and crypto stuff (all crypto stuff is by its nature a combination of joking and serious). […]

Last week, I was served an Instagram story advertising the Enron Summer Internship. Very few corporate parodies are funny, and obviously tastes will vary, but I found this ad much, much funnier than it ought to be. And yet the jokes are mostly subtle, except when the CEO character says “we can fire up the engines of this Titanic and fly it over the iceberg.” Meanwhile, Enron’s careers page is completely straight. I feel like some people will miss the joke and apply? (Or it’s not a joke???) And get hired? And actually go work at Enron 2.0? And this might be the future of work?

Shadow SEC Statement No. 5

Fortunately, a legal disaster was averted when the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that certain portions of the Administration’s bill (including the portions relating to the PCAOB) were outside the permissible scope of budget reconciliation legislation under the Senate’s rules. Still, the fate of the PCAOB remains uncertain. Its members can be removed by the SEC, seemingly without cause, as the result of a recent Supreme Court decision expressly dealing with the PCAOB. Also, legislation curtailing it can be adopted in new legislation. However, any such new legislation will be subject to a possible filibuster (which it would take 60 votes to overcome).

Given the importance of the PCAOB to our capital markets, we believe a more thoughtful process is necessary and should include a thorough assessment of the PCAOB’s impact to date. In our judgment, that impact has been highly beneficial and includes:

(1) a significant decline in the number of major audit deficiencies among the major auditing firms, as determined through annual PCAOB inspections (because the PCAOB conducted some 230 audits of firms covering 900 engagements in 2024, this improvement has occurred on a very large scale and is likely not a short-term aberration);

(2) a significant revision in the auditor’s short-form opinion letter (which empirical studies have found to have a favorable impact on price-discovery); and

(3) surveys showing that even corporate executives believe that internal controls have been strengthened as the result of the PCAOB’s recent efforts.

CEOs Start Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: AI Will Wipe Out Jobs

CEOs are no longer dodging the question of whether AI takes jobs. Now they are giving predictions of how deep those cuts could go.

“Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.,” Ford Motor Chief Executive Jim Farley said in an interview last week with author Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind.”

At JPMorgan Chase, Marianne Lake, CEO of the bank’s massive consumer and community business, told investors in May that she could see its operations head count falling by 10% in the coming years as the company uses new AI tools. […]

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in May that half of all entry-level jobs could disappear in one to five years, resulting in U.S. unemployment of 10% to 20%, according to an interview with Axios. He urged company executives and government officials to stop “sugarcoating” the situation.