In September 2026, Dario Amodei proposed an unusual response to the race to develop frontier artificial intelligence. If competition pushes leading laboratories to move faster than safety allows, Washington should let them coordinate. The Anthropic chief executive wants outside evaluators embedded inside AI companies, common safety standards, and, where necessary, coordinated limits on development. Because
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How Generative AI Could Change the Mutual Fund Industry
By Renholding
The mutual fund industry has become increasingly concentrated. The five largest fund families managed about 35% of industry assets in 2005, compared with 57% in 2024. One explanation is economic efficiency: Successful managers attract more capital, and larger organizations benefit from economies of scale. Another possibility is that large fund families enjoy an advantage because…
Are the Big Four Auditors’ PCAOB Inspection Results Too Good to Be True?
By Renholding
On August 13, 2026, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued its latest inspection reports for the six largest public audit firms: BDO USA, P.C., Deloitte & Touche LLP, Ernst & Young LLP, Grant Thornton LLP, KPMG LLP, and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. [1]These firms collectively audit the vast majority of corporate issuers. In this post,…
The Half-Trillion-Dollar Joint Venture Blind Spot
By Renholding
Joint ventures (JVs) have become the load-bearing walls of the industrial economy. In mining, over three-quarters of copper and nearly two-thirds of lithium production come from JVs[1]. In oil and gas, roughly half the output at majors like Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron comes from ventures they do not operate.[2] Beyond natural resources,…
The Documentation Paradox: AI and the Corporate Duty to Record
By Renholding
Much of the law governing corporate artificial intelligence rests on a single premise: that the protection from legal liability a company enjoys depends on the quality of the record it can produce. Directors defend oversight claims with minutes and charters. Issuers sustain the securities due-diligence defense with the documented trail of their investigation. Companies claim…
Stock as Currency
By Renholding
In April 2026, SpaceX announced an agreement giving it the right to acquire the AI coding company Cursor for $60 billion in SpaceX stock after SpaceX went public. If that stock transaction did not occur, the agreement called for a $10 billion breakup fee, payable in cash. The stock was the point. What did the…
Shadow SEC Statement No. 10: The SEC’s Proposed Climate “Do-Over”—Prejudged, Internally Inconsistent, and Partisan
By Renholding
More than two years after the SEC adopted final climate disclosure rules, the SEC has now proposed not to modify, improve, or trim them, but to rescind them entirely. This proposed action is at odds with the fact that more than 80% of large, listed operating companies already engage in climate disclosures—a fact that provides…
Slack Acquisitions: When Startup Innovation Gets Lost After the Deal
By Renholding
Debates over Big Tech M&A often focus on “killer acquisitions,” where a dominant firm buys a startup in order to eliminate a future rival. A more subtle and, in some ways, more difficult problem is that innovation can lose momentum after the deal closes even when the buyer did not set out to destroy the…
Paul Weiss Discusses Semiannual Reporting, Potential Flexibility, and Practical Realities
By Renholding
Early last month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) released proposed rules to allow U.S. public companies to report their financial statements on a semiannual instead of quarterly basis. The proposed amendments, if adopted, would allow companiesthe option to file one semiannual report on Form 10-S and one annual report on Form 10-K…
Skadden Discusses the Next Digital Framework
Executive Summary
- What’s new: The EU and CPTPP countries have agreed to accelerate work toward a digital trade agreement covering e-commerce, cross-border data flows and data localization for a combined economy of $35 trillion and 1.6 billion people.
- Why it matters: For multinationals operating across the EU and Asia Pacific markets, the initiative signals a shift toward
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