The Securities and Exchange Commission must’ve gotten word that 2016 is back. And then decided to add a year: Last week, the agency updated its internal enforcement protocols for the first time since 2017, which is sooo close to 2016.

The headline news from the update—an extended probe response timeline for recipients of Wells notices—will have implications for CFOs personally facing investigations, but it’s just as important to take a closer look at the fact the agency updated internal protocols at all, Rebecca Fike, partner in the regulatory and enforcement group at law firm Reed Smith and a former SEC attorney, told CFO Brew.

On your own. Individuals, including finance chiefs hit with a Wells notice, are likely going to feel the impact of the updated protocols the most, Fike said. That’s because the importance of a Wells notice has always had slightly different benefits for individuals versus firms.

Individual defendants “have every reason to want to take advantage of the Wells process. If you’re an individual CFO, for example, you could be facing, obviously, very bad collateral [damage], personal consequences…you’re going to want to fight back vigorously, so then you want the Wells [process],” she said.

Keep reading.—NP

US-Israeli strikes in Iran have claimed the lives of civilians, political leaders, and military personnel, while also introducing risks for organizations globally.

The CFO has a key role in navigating associated business risks, one expert told CFO Brew.

During heightened geopolitical volatility, finance leaders need to become the “chief risk officer” (if they don’t have one already, that is) of their organization, according to Jennifer Elder, a thought leader with the AICPA’s Business Learning Institute. Specifically, they need to ask “what must happen for us to do what we do,” Elder said, “and then go backward from there” to identify risks that would prevent them from conducting business.

The war with Iran puts regional supply chain concerns back in the spotlight. Shipping companies have begun rerouting voyages to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, Bloomberg reported. The key trade route connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, and about one-fifth of the global oil supply passes through there, according to the Associated Press.

Closing the Strait of Hormuz fits within one of Iran’s military objectives to “create the conditions that will make it difficult” for the US and its allies “to sustain the war,” Nick Redman, director of analysis at Oxford Analytica, said Wednesday during the Dow Jones Risk Journal Summit in New York. Redman pointed out that, in addition to attempting to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has also targeted oil and gas facilities across the Middle East.

Keep reading.—AZ

As if tariffs, AI disruption, and this cursed latest season of Love Is Blind weren’t enough to frazzle the economy, Americans now have another reason to feel jittery: The war with Iran could trigger a fresh bout of inflation.

Like the faint beeping of an appliance in your kitchen you can’t quite find the source of, inflation hasn’t fully gone away since it spiked in 2022, even though everyone got used to it being the background. But just when it feels like we’ve finally made progress towards the Fed’s 2% goal, the US and Israel attacked Iran, which immediately spiked the prices of oil and natural gas.

Zoom out. When oil and gas prices rise, they push up the price of fuel, transportation, and a slew of consumer goods. When energy gets more expensive, the costs are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices on store shelves.

For more, Brew Markets considers four different possible inflation scenarios that could ensue.—LB

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s weekly news quiz has been compared to getting a company-wide shout-out from your boss. It’s that satisfying.