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On July 11, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or the “Commission”) announced that it had settled an enforcement action against two individuals who were alleged to have engaged in insider trading. The SEC’s complaint in SEC v. Trijya Vakil and Neeraj Visen, filed in the Southern District of New York, serves as a pointed reminder that insider-trading enforcement remains a top‐tier priority — even when the dollar amounts appear modest and the conduct occurs far below the C-suite. Trijya Vakil, a senior director at Elanco Animal Health, Inc. (“Elanco”), obtained material non-public information (“MNPI”) while performing due-diligence work on Elanco’s then-confidential plan to acquire Kindred Biosciences, Inc. (“Kindred”). She (i) purchased 500 Kindred shares for herself and (ii) tipped longtime friend Neeraj Visen, who bought 38,000 shares the day before the deal was announced. Following a 46 percent price jump after the June 16, 2021 announcement, Vakil profited by approximately $2,400 and Visen by roughly $109,000.

On May 12, 2025, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC” or the “Commission”), Paul Atkins, announced his plan to “develop a rational regulatory framework for crypto asset markets” during his keynote address at the Crypto Task Force Roundtable on Tokenization.¹ Under this proposed framework, the SEC will update its regulations to include and accommodate on-chain cryptocurrency in the traditional financial market. The SEC’s new approach to crypto is emblematic of the Trump administration’s goal to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet,” as the President promised during his 2024 campaign.²

In a move that perhaps comes as no surprise, on March 27, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or “the Commission”) issued Press Release 2025-58 announcing it had voted to end its defense of its climate-related disclosures rules (The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors).

On January 13, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) filed a settled enforcement action against Ashford Inc. (“Ashford” or “the Company”), a company that provides products and services to the real estate and hospitality industries, for making false and misleading disclosures about a cybersecurity incident that exposed sensitive hotel customer information.

After a three-year crackdown on the use of “ephemeral” electronic messaging platforms by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) under Chair Gary Gensler, early indications are that the incoming Trump administration may abandon the Gensler-era practice of repeated industry-wide probes into employee use of off-channel communications.

On November 14, 2024, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the SEC’s ability to intervene in shareholder proposals under Rule 14a-8 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Rule 14a-8 Proposals”).

On November 8, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced a settled enforcement action (the “SEC Order”) against Invesco Advisers, Inc. (“Invesco”), an investment advisory firm, for making misleading statements concerning the company-wide percentage of assets under management (“AUM”) that integrated environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) factors in investment decisions.

Welcome to Vinson & Elkins’ Securities and ESG Updates.

On September 16, 2024, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or the “Commission”) brought charges against Kubient, Inc.’s (“Kubient”) former chairman and chief executive officer (“CEO”) for allegedly fabricating reports that the company had successfully tested its AI-supported software program, causing the company to overstate and misrepresent its revenue in connection with two public stock offerings.

For more than a decade, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) has been able to bring enforcement actions in either federal court or the agency’s internal venue.

On June 11, 2024, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) charged Illit Raz, the former CEO and founder of the since-shut-down artificial intelligence recruiting startup Joonko Diversity Inc. (“Joonko”), with defrauding investors by making false and misleading statements about a number of items — including the sophistication of the company’s technology.