UK Court Sentences Qian Zhimin to 11 Years in Prison for Role in Massive Bitcoin Scam

Chinese ‘Cryptoqueen’ gets 11 years for £4.2 billion Bitcoin ponzi scheme

A London court sentenced Chinese national Qian Zhimin to 11 years and eight months on 11 November for laundering billions worth of Bitcoin stolen from 120,000 investors, according to a BBC report.

The Metropolitan Police seized what authorities describe as the UK’s largest cryptocurrency haul during a 2021 raid on her Hampstead mansion.

The case highlights the persistent fraud crisis in the crypto industry. Blockchain security firm CertiK reports that investors lost over $2.47 billion to hacks and scams in the first half of 2025 alone, surpassing the full-year total of 2024.

Private equity could soon own a piece of major US law firm

US law firm McDermott Will & Schulte is reportedly exploring a complex restructuring to allow private equity firms to buy a stake in what could be a major move in the legal market.

The proposed structure, as reported by the Financial Times, involves creating a managed service organisation (MSO), a separate entity in which outside investors, like PE firms, could own a stake.

The firm’s chair, Ira Coleman, confirmed to the FT that as a “fastest-growing, most successful modern law firm,” McDermott is “constantly approached and we always listen to new ideas,” and is “excited to learn from other leading organisations as we challenge the status quo.” […]

If McDermott successfully makes this move, it could trigger an explosion of interest and a wave of outside investment across the US legal sector.

Nidec Accounting Scandal Threatens Legacy of Founder Nagamori in Japan

Nidec Corp. founder Shigenobu Nagamori once stood alongside his friends SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son and Fast Retailing Co.’s Tadashi Yanai, representing a new breed of Japanese entrepreneurs: Brash, ambitious and scathing in their condemnation of establishment, they called themselves “the three big-talking brothers.” Now, Nidec has flagged a series of suspected cases of improper accounting that risk tarnishing the 81-year-old Nagamori’s legacy and the company he founded, while Son and Yanai’s wealth and global prominence have grown.

SEC Changes Course, Concludes Mandatory Arbitration Provisions Do Not Conflict With Federal Securities Laws

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently changed its longstanding position disfavoring the inclusion of certain mandatory arbitration provisions in corporate certificates of incorporation or bylaws. As Chair Paul Atkins explained, the SEC’s September 17, 2025, policy statement “provides the Commission’s views on whether mandatory arbitration provisions are inconsistent with the federal securities laws – and concludes that they are not.” The upshot? The SEC’s decisions concerning “whether to accelerate the effectiveness of a registration statement will not be affected by the presence of a provision requiring arbitration of investor claims arising under the federal securities laws.”

To be clear, the policy statement does not express a view on whether mandatory arbitration provisions are “appropriate or optimal for issuers or investors.” And Atkins explained that the SEC will not weigh in on the second-order question of whether a company should adopt mandatory arbitration provisions, noting that he expects “robust public debate on this issue among various interested parties.” Indeed, since the SEC issued its policy statement, stakeholders have already begun debating the costs and benefits of mandating arbitration in this context – an issue we anticipate will be litigated on multiple fronts.

Tether Gold Traders

Anyway historically Tether, the stablecoin issuer, has been the sort of company that would take your $100 and park it in Bitcoin, or much weirder stuff, and certainly it is the sort of company that would take your $100 and park it in gold. And it is now a big enough manager of reserves that it is a player in the gold market…. […]

I keep saying this, but Tether really does have the simplest and best business in the world: It can borrow $180 billion at 0% interest, invest it in one-month Treasury bills at like 4%, take no risk whatsoever, collect $7 billion of interest a year and spend it all on yachts. But it does like to make things more complicated.