Week InReview
Friday | Jun 26, 2020
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#backtowork | A virtual tour
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The city that never sleeps
has headed back to the office, sort of.
New York City on Monday started allowing companies to reopen their office spaces, which have been closed for months to nonessential workers. WSJ's graphics team compiled a visual tour of potential adaptations and guidelines for reducing virus risk.
Not many people are going back yet. Some firms are choosing to keep their offices closed for now, while others have opted to
open them at significantly reduced occupancy
. Many companies have talked to workers about what jobs can
–
and can't
–
be successfully done from home, giving employees a voice about whether they prefer to keep working remotely.
— The Wall Street Journal
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For Wall Street, this week might mark the end of a sweeping period of financial deregulation. Agencies are finishing Volcker Rule and swaps revamps this week, and time is running out to ease other rules before the November election.
(Bloomberg Politics | Jun 24)
see also
Banks get easier Volcker rule and $40 billion break on swaps
(Bloomberg Business | Jun 25)
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has
uncovered problems with conflicted relationships and inadequate fee and expense disclosures at private
-equity firms and hedg
e funds, issues it said may have unfa
irly harmed investors. The SEC laid out the types of failures it has seen in recent examinations of investment firms in a public alert released Tuesday. (The Wall Street Journal | Jun 24)
see also
Wall Street frets over Investing 101 as hedging gets dangerous
(Bloomberg Markets | Jun 23)
More than 100 members of Congress are calling on the administration and the Federal Reserve to help struggling businesses pause debt payments in a key real-estate financing market. Many of the hotels, shopping malls and office buildings that borrow money in the roughly $550 billion market for commercial mortgage-backed securities said they have been unable to negotiate debt reprieves during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some are worried they could lose their properties to foreclosure. (The Wall Street Journal | Jun 23)
Last month, 43 U.S. issuers of leveraged loans asked their lenders for relief on the conditions attached to their debts. That surpassed the previous high of 25 set in March 2009 for these typically lower-rated borrowers, according to figures from LCD, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence. (Financial Times | Jun 23)
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Justice Department agreed to a formal partnership that could result in greater scrutiny of the fees charged by stock exchanges for crucial market data. The SEC has recently clashed with exchanges over the fees levied for their most robust data products. Now, the move to involve the Justice Department, with its authority over competitive markets, will beef up the SEC’s ability to examine whether exchanges abuse their quasi-monopoly status to overcharge for data, as a number of big banks, brokerages and trading firms allege. (The Wall Street Journal | Jun 22)
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Redefining the definition of 'baseline' in cybersecurity
While many security solution providers promise to protect your network by establishing a baseline of your network behavior, the definition of “baseline” can vary widely. At a basic level, a baseline is a network traffic analysis (NTA) of normal, day-to-day network behavior. Effective network security and regulatory compliance depend on a baseline benchmark that serves as a
single source of truth
.
North Korean Covid-19 phishing campaign targets six countries
A multi-country North Korean phishing campaign designed to capitalize on government Covid-19 bail-out measures is being undertaken by Pyongyang’s notorious Lazarus Group, and is “designed to impersonate government agencies, departments, and trade associations who are tasked to oversee the disbursement of the fiscal aid,” according to
Cyfirma
. The Goldman Sachs-backed cybersecurity startup said the campaign was slated to launch over the weekend in the U.S., U.K., India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.
More than two-thirds of Q1 malware hidden by HTTPS
HTTPS encrypted connections are widely used to deliver malware, highlighting the importance of regular inspections, reports Watchguard. The security vendor found that 67% of the more than 32 million malware variants it blocked in the first three months of this year were delivered via HTTPS connections.
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MORE CYBER SECURITY NEWS HERE:
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The disruption of the $1.7 trillion art market
It's already begun. Masterworks lets you invest in A+ works by artists with 8-20% historical appreciation — just like buying stocks.
How to clean and disinfect yourself, your home, and your stuff
Here are some in-depth best practices for keeping yourself (and just about everything else) clean and virus-free. The Centers for Disease Control
recommends
we all take steps to clean and sanitize high-touch surfaces in our homes. Get into the weeds of how long the virus might last on surfaces, which disinfectants may kill it, and the steps you can take to keep clean.
How strict are airlines about face masks in flight?
With little direction from the feds and pressure to fill seats as safely as possible as Covid-19 continues, U.S. carriers offer significantly different policies. American, United and Delta, which have been enforcing face-covering requirements at boarding and not in-flight, say they will get tougher starting this week. Each airline says passengers who refuse to wear masks in-flight without a valid reason may be restricted from future flights on the airline. The length of time on the no-fly list will be determined by the incident.
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