Prediction markets allow participants to trade contracts on whether or not real-world events will occur. These platforms have grown rapidly, and contracts tied to specific company activity are now actively trading, including contracts on IPOs, mergers and acquisitions, earnings call mentions, and sales and subscriber metrics. While most public companies have adopted insider trading and related policies to regulate trading in the company’s securities, companies’ policies are generally written for securities transactions, where prediction market event contracts are generally not offered or traded as securities in the traditional sense. That gap matters, as companies still need to guard against misuse of company information in the context of other transactions, such as events contracts. Trading on the basis of nonpublic information on prediction markets may attract enforcement at multiple levels, including platform based sanctions, regulatory actions, and criminal charges against individuals that may have implications for public companies. This alert explains the risks, outlines what companies can do to address these risks and identifies what to watch for as the regulatory framework takes shape.

On March 5, 2026, the SEC granted exemptive relief from Section 16(a) beneficial ownership reporting requirements for directors and officers of foreign private issuers (“FPIs”) incorporated or organized in certain jurisdictions with insider reporting regimes substantially similar to the United States. The exemption covers FPIs incorporated in Canada, Chile, member states of the European Economic Area, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom—provided the FPI is subject to a qualifying regulation and each individual director or officer satisfies certain conditions. This relief arrives just ahead of the March 18, 2026 deadline for initial Form 3 filings, although qualifying FPIs and their directors and officers should review the exemption’s conditions carefully before concluding they can rely on it. In this alert, we summarize the qualifying jurisdictions, the exemption’s conditions and limitations, and what FPIs should do now.

When the SEC announced changes to the Rule 14a-8 no-action letter process in November 2025, many observers—ourselves included—anticipated that some shareholder proponents might turn to litigation if companies excluded their proposals under the new framework. That anticipated litigation has now arrived. On February 17, 2026, two separate lawsuits were filed challenging company decisions to exclude shareholder proposals from their 2026 proxy materials. A third lawsuit followed just two days later, on February 19, 2026. These cases mark the earliest examples of litigation under this season’s revised Rule 14a-8 no-action letter process.