SEC Chairman Atkins: Off-Channel Communications Cases “Not the Way a Regulator Should Act.”

SEC Chief: Texting Crackdown Went Too Far

The Securities and Exchange Commission chairman on Tuesday described the agency’s handling of off-channel communications over the last couple of years as “not the way a regulator should act.”

SEC Chair Paul Atkins was responding to a question posed by Ken Bentsen, president and CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, at the group’s annual meeting in Washington, about his thoughts on “e-communication, off-channel, the whole issue around that — the uncertainty.”

Said Atkins: “We have to address that.”

Prediction markets

Gutenplan and Alvarado add — as I keep pointing out — that it is not at all clear that this is legal: These contracts are regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, whose rules explicitly prohibit event contracts that relate to “gaming.” Everyone, including Kalshi and the CFTC, understood that “gaming” included football bets until about this year. And then Kalshi started offering football bets and the CFTC just quietly let it. There was no new rulemaking or interpretive release or public hearing about how now football bets are not “gaming,” and the CFTC has not repealed its rule prohibiting “gaming” contracts. Everyone is just ignoring it.

You could imagine that that could change at any time: The CFTC could shut all of this down without any new rulemaking, just by enforcing its existing rules. But it won’t! If the president is running a sportsbook, surely the CFTC won’t stop him.

Sequoia Capital Invests in AI Tool That Could Replace Junior Bankers

Sequoia Capital is making a bet on the future of Wall Street, leading an investment in Rogo Technologies Inc., a startup developing artificial intelligence tools to make bankers more efficient, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal would value New York-based Rogo at $750 million, the people said.

Rogo builds software that helps investment bankers with certain tasks and eventually aims to create the AI equivalent of a banking analyst….

SEC Chair Atkins is clearly interested in getting cases filed

The LARO and NYRO “skeleton” staff have been keeping busy. In addition to the SEC v. Luckey case (see my post yesterday), the SEC filed four other cases since the shutdown began, including one yesterday:

—SEC v. Lin Thuy Lee et al., 25-cv-02324 (C.D. Cal.)

—SEC v. Santarelli, 25-cv-02375 (C.D. Cal.)

—SEC v. Wander et al., 25-cv-08565 (S.D.N.Y.)

—SEC v. Lichtenstein, 25-cv-08742 (S.D.N.Y.)

All four complaints allege offering frauds, but no allegations of ongoing investor harm or motions for emergency relief. Unlike Luckey, none of these cases involve any visible statute of limitations issues; it appears that these complaints could have been filed months from now with no prejudice to the SEC or investors.

I asked a question in my post yesterday that I didn’t know the answer to: was Luckey the first non-emergency SEC case filed during a shutdown? As noted above, the answer is “no.” Chair Atkins is clearly interested in getting cases filed despite the shutdown (as well as actively monitoring the markets for “hanky-panky,” as reported yesterday), which is great.

Cyber and AI Oversight Disclosures: What Companies Shared in 2025

In today’s fast-changing and high?stakes digital environment, boards are elevating their oversight approach. Voluntary disclosures around AI and cyber are not just more common — they’re also more robust, doubling in scope across several critical areas.

Companies are putting the spotlight on their technology governance, signaling an increasing emphasis on cyber and AI oversight to stakeholders.

In the past year, according to company disclosures, the increased sophistication of cyber threats has prompted companies to enhance their cybersecurity defenses, while adversaries have also advanced their attack methods. Ransomware attacks rose by over a third, and generative AI (GenAI) — rather than traditional AI — is emerging as a key feature of the threats, often in the form of deepfakes, and the company response.