We’re living through antitrust legal history, folks. Get your stories ready for the grandkids.

A federal court in Texas just issued the first major decision—striking down a Federal Trade Commission ban on non-compete clauses—to make use of the Supreme Court’s ruling in June that ended Chevron deference, the 1980s precedent which had judges yield to the expertise of administrative agencies when it came to interpreting laws that underpin rules and regulations.

Since the high court’s June ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, legal experts have been watching for how federal judges would flex the new interpretive powers in different domains of law.

Ed Schwartz, a partner at Reed Smith who specializes in antitrust law, talked CFO Brew through what he thinks are some of the potential impacts on how the Justice Department (DOJ) and the FTC administer and enforce the laws governing competition.

Click here for more on how the Chevron decision may impact CFOs.—GD

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In the latest episode, Ali Ramadan, a partner at Goodwin, explores the evolving trends and regulatory challenges impacting global M&A trends.

Check it out.

Things that can be said by either the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) or your friends trying to help you date better people: It’s time for us to raise our standards, okay?

And that’s exactly what will happen now that the PCAOB has signoff on new standards from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Auditors will now be on the hook for violations caused by negligence, not just recklessness, after commissioners voted to approve the update to PCAOB Rule 3502: Responsibility Not to Knowingly or Recklessly Contribute to Violations, Reuters reported, with Democratic members prevailing in a 3–2 vote.

PCAOB Chair Erica Williams hailed the vote in a statement. “With this rulemaking, which updates a rule that is nearly 20 years old, the Board has aligned PCAOB rules to what investors expect,” she said. “When an associated person’s negligence directly and substantially contributes to firm violations, the PCAOB has tools to hold them accountable.”

Making it official. Commissioners also approved the PCAOB’s adoption of AS 1000: General Responsibilities of the Auditor in Conducting an Audit, and updated other standards to “reduce the risk that auditors who use technology-assisted analysis will issue an opinion without obtaining relevant and reliable audit evidence,” Williams said.

For more on the new standards, click here.—GD

GoDaddy is more than just website domains. The company aims to be the one-stop shop for entrepreneurs to quickly put up a website, complete with a unique brand, business email, and e-commerce platform. Mark McCaffrey, GoDaddy’s CFO, was a recent guest on Morning Brew’s “After Earnings” podcast to talk about the company’s transformation, its new AI-enabled service, and how all of that showed up in the company’s recent earnings report.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Let’s get into earnings. So, you guys reported Q2 earnings Aug. 1…[and] beat revenue estimates, beat EPS, raised guidance. What was really working for you guys this last quarter?

It’s the accumulation of, I think, our transformation that we started several years ago. To give you a background, we had to create the consolidated technology stack that provided that seamless experience to our customers, and over the past few years we’ve been working on integrating all that technology into one platform so we could have access and create that experience for our customer.

…That momentum coming into this year has started to hit. We launched a bundling and pricing initiative, which bundles certain products together that we think our customers are going to value more. Obviously, it allows us a different price point. That is coming to fruition. Airo, we just launched this year; [it’s] not even in our numbers right now. It will be an addition to that as time goes on, but you’re seeing the momentum of the transformation to the one-stop shop and engaging our customers exactly where we said we were going to engage them, and that’s all starting to take effect and have the momentum, and that's what we’re seeing coming into this year.

Click here to keep reading.—AZ

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