Good morning. The speculative bonanza in special-purpose acquisition companies, better known as SPACs, appears to be dead. Gary Gensler wants to make sure it doesn’t come back to life.

• The vote: The Securities and Exchange Commission, which Gensler chairs, voted 3-2 Wednesday to adopt rules that seek to make it clearer to SPAC investors if they are getting a raw bargain. Once the rules take effect in about five months, according to lawyers familiar with the deals, they will likely drive another nail into the coffin of a recent Wall Street fad fueled by market froth and regulatory arbitrage. “Just because a company uses an alternative method to go public does not mean its investors are any less deserving of time-tested investor protections,” Gensler said Wednesday.
   
• What's a SPAC: Also called a blank-check company, a SPAC is a shell firm that lists publicly with the sole intent of merging with a private company to take it public. After regulators approve the deal, the company going public replaces the SPAC in the stock market.
   
• The SPAC market: More than 860 SPACs raised $246 billion in 2020 and 2021, according to the data service SPACInsider, a period that also saw the rise of meme stocks and a cryptocurrency bubble. 

U.S. issues $15 million bounty targeting alleged Iran drone middleman.

The U.S. said it would pay up to $15 million for tips on Hossein Hatefi Ardakani, an Iranian businessman who is alleged to have helped acquire technology for attack drones sold to Russia.

The move to put out a bounty for information on an alleged export-control violation comes after the U.S. sanctioned and charged Ardakani, chair of an electronics company, over his alleged work sourcing dual-use technology for drone production by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Swiss financial regulator appoints European Central Bank executive as head.

Swiss financial regulator Finma appointed European Central Bank executive Stefan Walter as its new head.

The hiring of 59-year-old Walter, who will take over the chief executive role on April 1, follows criticism of the regulator over its handling of the collapse in March of Credit Suisse. Days before Credit Suisse’s downfall, the regulator said that the bank was meeting its capital and liquidity requirements and that problems at the time in the U.S. financial sector didn’t pose a direct contagion risk.

• MGM Grand and The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas agree to pay about $7.5 million in fines related to anti-money-laundering failures. How a bookie brought down a Las Vegas executive. 
   
• A Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. lawyer remained on paid administrative leave for 10 weeks after he was indicted on federal charges related to the production, possession and distribution of child pornography, an agency official said.
   
• British billionaire Joe Lewis pleaded guilty Wednesday to securities-fraud charges, resolving an insider-trading case in which prosecutors accused him of tipping off pilots, personal assistants and romantic partners about companies in which he invested.
   
• The Securities and Exchange Commission is questioning some community and regional banks about their exposure to commercial real estate in their loan portfolios, as potential losses on the loans could spur them to further cut lending.
   
• Five of the nation’s most prestigious universities agreed to settle a lawsuit accusing them of colluding to limit students’ financial-aid packages, saying in court filings Tuesday evening that they would pay a combined $104.5 million into a fund for students harmed by the alleged antitrust violations.
   
• Disney CEO Bob Iger is a little over a year into his second stint in the post, and his return to the House of Mouse isn’t going as planned. The decline of Disney’s long-lucrative TV business is quickening, and the supposed solution, streaming, has left Disney with billions of dollars in losses.

Regional banks had another ugly quarter.

The 2023 bank crisis is over, but the worst may be yet to come for some regional and community lenders.

Profits dropped sharply at regional banks in the fourth quarter, including at the bigger ones that have generally fared better than their smaller peers. Net income was down roughly 90% from a year earlier at KeyCorp, around 70% at Citizens Financial Group and more than 40% at PNC Financial Services Group. Truist Financial swung to a loss.

• All 74 people aboard a Russian military plane, including dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war, died when it crashed near the Ukraine border, Russia said on Wednesday, in one of the deadliest incidents in Russia since the start of the war.
   
• The Israeli military said it was pushing into the west of Khan Younis and was engaged in fierce fighting with some of Hamas’s strongest fighters after encircling the southern Gaza city, where the population has swelled by hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians.
   
• India is deploying a growing number of warships to counter rebel attacks on commercial ships plying around the Middle East, while steering clear of joining the official U.S.-led force in the Red Sea, as it looks to protect its ties with Iran.
   
• Europe’s economy is beginning to feel the pain from supply-chain disruptions caused by the crisis in the Middle East.
   
• The timing and scale of the People’s Bank of China’s policy easing this week may have surprised investors and given stock markets a much-needed lift, but the move does little to resolve long-term economic concerns.
   
• The pain for home- and auto-insurance customers is quickly becoming investors’ gain. Insurance giants’ shares and profits are hitting records, thanks in part to steep rate hikes.

• Apple is planning to add new fees and restrictions when it begins allowing people to download apps outside of the iPhone’s closed ecosystem.
   
• Chipotle Mexican Grill said it plans to hire 19,000 workers to keep up with what it calls burrito season and offer new benefits to attract younger people.
   
• Wealthy alumni activists enraged at the leadership of their Ivy League alma maters have helped push out the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. Now, a new group of donors are pulling out the same playbook at Cornell University.
   
• U.S. air-safety regulators said they will permit grounded Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets to resume flying after airlines complete inspections, following a near-catastrophe on an Alaska Airlines flight.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Follow Risk & Compliance editor David Smagalla @DSmagalla_DJ and reporters Mengqi Sun @_MengqiSun, Dylan Tokar @dgtokar and Richard Vanderford @VanderfordRich.

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