There’s a new sheriff in town—and he sure seems to be a fan of deregulation.

As leadership shifted at the Securities and Exchange Commission last year—from outgoing Chair Gary Gensler to Acting Chair Mark Uyeda and now Chair Paul Atkins—enforcement actions fell dramatically.

There were 56 enforcement actions taken against public companies in fiscal 2025, per analysis of SEC enforcement activity from the NYU Pollack Center for Law & Business and Cornerstone Research, only four of which were taken after Uyeda and Atkins took over. That amounted to “the lowest number of actions initiated by a new SEC administration during its first fiscal year since at least FY 2013,” the report said.

“There’s no question that from the enforcement perspective, there was a precipitous drop,” Ben Schiffrin, director of securities policy at Better Markets, a nonprofit that advocates for Wall Street regulation, told CFO Brew.

Keep reading.—NP

What do weddings and CFOs have in common? Spreadsheets, of course.

Michael Pickrum was named the new CFO of wedding platform The Knot Worldwide in January. On his seventh day, he talked with CFO Brew about his approach to walking into a new organization.

The former CFO of Maximum Effort, a digital marketing, film production, and investment company co-founded by Ryan Reynolds, and a 17-year veteran of BET/Viacom, Pickrum said that on his first day of meeting new colleagues in the office, he had all the emotions most people hope to have on their wedding day—“energized, enthusiastic”—and that it “exceeded expectations.”

A CFO, of course, can’t expect a long honeymoon period. Pickrum’s rule for his first days to weeks as a new CFO is “don’t break anything.” He focuses on getting to know the finance and accounting team, his executive peers, and others in the organization “to get a feel for the culture and how things really work and just build that rapport with people.”

Keep reading.—JK

The tech sector took a sharp hit yesterday as investors grappled with a familiar fear in a new costume: AI is beginning to undercut core software businesses.

Anthropic’s release of new tools designed to automate legal work spooked markets and sparked a sell-off, but panic quickly spread beyond legal tech. Financial and data software names also slid as investors questioned how defensible “must-have” platforms really are in an AI-first world.

But AI anxiety isn’t contained to software stocks—it’s spilling into private markets, where exposure is deeper, exits are slower, and the pain of a tech downturn could be much worse.

Private markets feel the shock. Alternative managers sold off yesterday: Blackstone and Apollo Global Management each fell about 5%, while KKR and Blue Owl Capital both dropped around 10%, reflecting investor concerns over their software-heavy portfolios.

Keep reading on Brew Markets.—SY