Good morning. A former senior London police officer will serve as the next director of the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office, an agency tasked with investigating major business crimes that has faced a series of controversies and courtroom defeats under its current director, Risk & Compliance Journal’s Dylan Tokar reports.

Nick Ephgrave, a former assistant commissioner for London’s Metropolitan Police Service, will begin an initial five-year term as the SFO’s director in late September, the U.K.’s attorney general said Wednesday.

Ephgrave, the agency’s first nonlawyer director, will succeed Lisa Osofsky, whose tenure has been marked by several high-profile corporate settlements but also many legal setbacks that culminated in an investigation into the agency’s handling of a case involving Monaco-based oil consulting firm Unaoil.

Ephgrave’s appointment marks a shift for the SFO, many of whose prior directors had experience as public prosecutors. At the time of her appointment in 2018, Osofsky, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen, had served as a U.S. federal prosecutor and deputy general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and held jobs at Goldman Sachs and two risk consultancies.

Unlike the U.S. Justice Department, the Serious Fraud Office houses both investigators and prosecutors under one roof, an organizational structure designed to help the agency handle complex crimes that need legal input throughout the course of an investigation.

New York City starts to regulate AI used in hiring tools

Employers are preparing for a new law going into effect Wednesday in New York City that will be the first in the nation to regulate the use of automation and artificial intelligence in hiring decisions.

The law, known as NYC 144, requires employers that use certain kinds of software to assist with hiring and promotion decisions—including chatbot interviewing tools and resume scanners that look for keyword matches—to audit those tools annually for potential race and gender bias, and then publish the results on their websites.

• Silicon Valley Bank, which was recently acquired by First Citizens BancShares, has resumed lending to the startup and venture market, though less aggressively than in the past.
   
• Cryptocurrency traders have rushed out of Binance’s American exchange following a regulatory crackdown, dropping the market share of Binance.US to a little more than 1% last week from a record high of 27% in April, according to data provider Kaiko.
   
• Lazard fired a top restructuring banker after he was said to have acted inappropriately toward employees of the investment bank at a party he hosted over the weekend, people familiar with the matter said.

China’s weakening currency is becoming a headache for its Central Bank

China’s currency has weakened too far and too fast for its central bank.

The onshore yuan, also called the renminbi, has lost around 4.8% of its value since the start of the year, according to FactSet. A dollar on Wednesday bought 7.2432 yuan in mainland China, a rate that is heading toward a 15-year low set last November. The more freely traded offshore yuan was at 7.2542 per dollar, according to FactSet.

• People in Taiwan have been following every twist of the war in Ukraine. But, while their sympathy for the Ukrainian cause is near-universal, the conclusions for the island’s own future widely diverge.
   
• Iran attempted to seize two oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz and fired shots at one of them, the U.S. Navy said, the latest in a series of attacks on tankers in the strategic waterway.
   
• Russian forces are badly depleted but Ukraine’s counteroffensive is off to a slow, grinding start, Western allies said, as stiffer-than-expected Russian resistance, including minefields and defensive fortifications, and a lack of aircover have dashed any hopes of a swift breakthrough.
   
• Palestinian families returned Wednesday to a partly destroyed refugee camp in the occupied West Bank after Israel ended a large-scale two-day military operation, with relatives organizing funerals for those killed in the Israeli assault.
   
• Global temperature maps have become dark red as rising temperatures capped the world’s warmest day since record-keeping began in 1979, while last month was the hottest June, according to new data from U.S. and European scientists.

• Families of wrongfully detained U.S. citizens struggle to maintain detainees’ financial lives in their absence, even as they also wage daily battles to secure their loved one’s freedom. Their bureaucratic battles have spurred government officials, advocacy groups and lawmakers to search for ways to help them cut through the red tape.
   
• United Parcel Service and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters said negotiations have stalled on a new labor contract, raising the risk of roughly 330,000 package-delivery drivers and package sorters going on strike next month.
   
• Excitement over artificial intelligence is proving a powerful counterforce for a tech economy that had been slowing, lifting share prices and growth outlooks at many giants and igniting a wave of new startups.
   
• The Secret Service said Wednesday that lab tests showed a substance found at the White House over the weekend was cocaine.

Follow us on Twitter 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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