– On Wednesday the US Senate confirmed Paul Atkins as the chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Bloomberg reported (paywall). He was approved in a 53-44 vote in his favor and replaces the outgoing Gary Gensler.
– Atkins is expected to make it easier for companies to go public in the US and to ease up on enforcement, Politico reported. Atkins is a former SEC commissioner who left the organization during 2008’s financial crash.
In his time away from the SEC, he has been vocally critical of the regulator, including its response to the financial crisis, the ensuing Dodd-Frank Act, its campaign for climate-related disclosures and what he sees as a strict approach to the crypto industry.
Atkins will face both heavy criticism and oversight as he ‘has to operate in the political environment that he’s in and he has to operate within the confines of the executive orders and the directives from the White House,’ former SEC chief counsel Kimberly Hamm told Politico.
– Walmart pulled its first quarter guidance in the midst of uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs, CNBC reported. Walmart made the announcement on Wednesday, hours before Trump walked back many of his tariffs but increased levies on goods from China.
Walmart’s CFO John David Rainey told investors that ‘operating income has been harder to predict and we’ve widened our internal range of scenarios, given the current backdrop’ and that the retailer was ‘still working through what this [new tariff environment] means for us... the uncertainty and decline in consumer sentiment has led to a little more sales volatility week to week and frankly, day to day.’
The company still projected 3 to 4 percent growth for first quarter sales.
– Delta Air Lines also rescinded its guidance for record profits this year, citing a travel slowdown as a result of tariff-sparked concerns amongst travelers, the Financial Times reported (paywall).
‘The airline sector is in the eye of the storm’ TD Cowen’s Tom Fitzgerald told Reuters (paywall). Delta is the first big US airline to report its earnings, but other carriers are expected to reflect similar uncertainty.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian said: ‘f you start to put a 20 percent incremental cost on top of an aircraft it gets very difficult to make that math work... we will defer any deliveries that have a tariff on them.’
– A class action lawsuit against Bristol Myers Squibb, which accused the company of filing sham patents to keep generic versions of their blood cancer drug Polamyst off the market, has been dismissed, Reuters reported.
In 2024, Polamyst sales of $3.55 bn accounted for 7.3 percent of Bristol Myers’ $48.3 bn total revenue.
Plaintiffs in the case alleged that they were being overcharged for the drug and that they could have afforded generic versions that Bristol Myers prevented from reaching the market with lawsuits that it filed against drug producers.
Despite this, US district judge Edgardo Ramos in Manhattan found that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that Bristol Myers violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Talia Samuelson
Talia Samuelson is a reporter for Governance Intelligence. She previously worked as a journalist in Buenos Aires and has covered compliance in Latin America.
