Sky Blog
There has been a certain ebullience in market sentiment toward Venezuela since the capture in early January of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro by U.S. military forces. Venezuelan sovereign and PDVSA bonds rallied sharply as investors anticipated that a political …
The next big episode of distress in the financial system may not begin inside a bank. Instead, it may start with a margin call, a failed repo rollover, or an open-ended fund facing redemptions.Wherever it comes from, though, the fallout …
The private equity exit market has improved, but it has not reverted to the conditions many sponsors once viewed as normal.
Several sponsor-backed issuers accessed the public markets during the first quarter of 2026, while large sponsor-to-sponsor transactions also returned …
The Trump Administration’s May 19 executive order[1] on fintech innovation (the “Order”) seeks to force a sharp shift in the regulatory relationship between banks and other federally regulated financial services providers and what it calls “fintech”—any financial service offered …
Since the Second World War, the U.S. dollar has been the dominant global currency for trade, settlement, and reserve purposes. As other countries seek to move away from the dollar system, key U.S. policymakers believe that the rise of dollar …
On March 30, 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor (the DOL) published its heavily anticipated proposed rule entitled “Fiduciary Duties in Selecting Designated Investment Alternatives” (the Proposed Rule).[1] Over the years, sponsors of private funds and other investment vehicles …
With the U.S. Department of Labor’s recent proposed rule, Fiduciary Duties in Selecting Designated Investment Alternatives, retail investors’ access to private assets comes ever closer to reality, though not without controversy. The battle lines are unsurprising: Private asset managers …
In January 2026, Dudley DeBosier—a leading Louisiana personal-injury firm—announced a high-profile private equity partnership. The deal used a management services organization, or MSO: a split-entity workaround in which attorneys keep ownership of the law firm while a PE-backed vehicle …
On March 19, 2026, the federal banking agencies issued a package of proposed changes to the regulatory capital requirements for banking institutions of all sizes, from the largest GSIBs and super-regional banks to community banks. This package of proposals (the …
On April 7, 2026, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convened an urgent, closed-door meeting with the CEOs of some of the nation’s largest banks to discuss the cybersecurity risks posed by Anthropic’s newly announced AI …
Silicon Valley Bank’s failure exposed many familiar weaknesses: uninsured deposits, interest-rate risk, a concentrated depositor base, and weak interest-rate hedging. But the more revealing lesson lies one layer deeper. The supervisory failure was not simply that regulators missed red flags …
The GENIUS Act, enacted in July 2025, provides a federal regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers, including a carveout that, under certain conditions, allows states to oversee issuers of less than $10 billion. After the law went into effect, the …
On March 25, 2026, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (the “Council”) unanimously voted to propose amendments to its interpretive guidance (the “Proposed Interpretive Guidance”) regarding the designation of nonbank financial companies as “systemically important financial institutions” (“SIFIs”) for supervision by …
Difficulties in valuing the assets and liabilities of the largest banking organizations aggravated the 2007-08 financial crisis. Regulation under the Dodd-Frank Act sought to increase transparency and reduce complexity among these institutions. With the benefit of significant hindsight, it is …
On April 6, 2026, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) has exclusive jurisdiction over sports-related event contracts offered by Kalshi, becoming the first federal …
Early-stage startups need to raise small amounts of money quickly, cheaply, and repeatedly, often when they have very little to show to prospective investors. At this stage, it is far too early to negotiate the terms traditional venture deals are …
Prediction markets allow participants to trade contracts on whether or not real-world events will occur. These platforms have grown rapidly, and contracts tied to specific company activity are now actively trading, including contracts on IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, earnings call …
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC or the Commission), under Chairman Michael Selig’s leadership, has taken an expansive view of its authority over prediction markets, arguing that the agency has exclusive jurisdiction over event contracts traded on designated contract …