Good morning. A bipartisan pair of U.S. senators introduced legislation Monday to prohibit entities regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, including prediction-market exchanges Kalshi and Polymarket’s U.S. platform, from listing contracts related to sporting events.

• First of its kind: The legislation is the first bipartisan Senate bill seeking to regulate prediction markets. The bill also seeks to prohibit “casino-style games” from being listed on the platforms, such as slot machine games, video poker, blackjack and bingo.
   
• Oversight fight: Lawmakers, states and federal regulators have sparred in recent months over how event contracts on prediction-market platforms, including on sports, should be regulated, and by whom. Sen. John Curtis (R., Utah), a co-sponsor of the bill, said “Too many young people in Utah are getting exposed to addictive sports betting and casino-style gaming contracts that belong under state control, not under federal regulators.”
   
• Closing the backdoor: “The CFTC is greenlighting these markets and even promoting their growth,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), the other co-sponsor, said. “It’s time for Congress to step in and eliminate this backdoor, which violates state consumer protections, intrudes upon tribal sovereignty and offers no public revenue.”
   
• Casino interests: “It’s clear this bill is motivated by casino interests that are threatened by competition,” said Elisabeth Diana, a Kalshi spokeswoman. While Kalshi and Polymarket offer yes-or-no wagers tied to everything from politics to the weather to pop culture, much of the trading activity is focused on professional and college sports, putting the platforms in competition with betting sites such as FanDuel and DraftKings.

SEC probing non-fraud violations amid enforcement shift, official says.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is still investigating cases that don’t involve a company or executive making false representations even as it shifts toward a “back-to-basics” enforcement approach focused on investor harm, a top enforcement official said.

“Fraud cases are and should be the highest priority,” Nicholas Heinke, an associate director of enforcement at the SEC’s Denver office, said Friday during a Practising Law Institute conference in Washington, D.C. “That does not mean the enforcement division is absent unless there’s a violation of the anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws.”

Puerto Rican bank’s ex-CEO pleads guilty to fraud and evading sanctions.

The former chief executive of a Puerto Rican international bank pleaded guilty to leading a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme that drove the bank into collapse and separately conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions against Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Risk Journal reports. 

Tomás Niembro Concha, 64, of Miami, admitted to siphoning at least $24.9 million from Nodus International Bank over several years alongside the bank’s board chairman, concealing the self-dealing from fellow board members, executives and regulators until the bank was placed into liquidation by Puerto Rican authorities in 2023. The two men used a network of related companies and sham investments to funnel bank funds to themselves in violation of Puerto Rican law, the Justice Department said in a statement Friday.

Iranian missile strikes are costing big oil billions in lost revenue. 

When Iranian missiles struck the Pearl gas-to-liquids facility in Qatar, they knocked out one of Shell’s crown jewels, a giant plant that is among the most sophisticated and profitable businesses in the company’s sprawling global operations.

The plant was so heavily damaged that one of its two production lines is expected to be shut for at least a year, Qatar said.

Some of the Western oil industry’s most important investments have become targets for Iran in its war with the U.S. and Israel. Exxon Mobil, which has more at stake in Qatar than any other big oil company, gets roughly one-fifth of its oil-and-gas production from the Middle East, analysts estimate.
 

See also: 

• Iran Presses Assault as Diplomatic Efforts Persist
• Iran Snubs U.S. Oil Sanctions Waiver, Saying There Is Nothing to Release
• President Backs Off Threat To Iranian Energy
• Europe Is Quietly Playing a Crucial Role in the Iran War
• How the Iran Conflict Is Widening, in Maps

Bank of Canada speech takes on heightened importance amid rapid turn in rate expectations.

The Bank of Canada has a chance later this week to either rebut or buttress traders’ expectations for at least three interest-rate increases in 2026 when its No. 2 official speaks to a business audience in Western Canada.

The central bank left its policy rate unchanged March 18, arguing that it was premature to determine the total economic effect from the war in Iran. Bank of Canada Gov. Tiff Macklem added that the risk of higher energy costs spreading and lifting prices for other goods and services appeared contained, reflecting an elevated level of spare capacity in the economy.

EU says it will provisionally apply South American trade deal from May 1.

The European Union will provisionally apply its trade agreement with South American countries from May 1, the European Commission said as lawmakers in the bloc are still waiting to ratify the accord.

“Today is an important step in demonstrating our credibility as a major trading partner,” Maros Sefcovic, the commission’s top trade negotiator, said in a statement Monday. “The priority now is turning this EU-Mercosur agreement into concrete outcomes, giving EU exporters the platform they need to seize new opportunities for trade, growth and jobs.”

Dow Jones Risk Journal is hosting two webinars in coming days focused on prominent risks.

On March 26 we will discuss how compliance professionals can manage the relaxation of Russia sanctions as part of efforts to ease pressure on world oil markets. This event will feature: Stephanie Broekaart, a partner with Agorax who worked as a trade lawyer at several major companies; and Glenn Kaminsky, managing director with KPMG and a former official with the U.S. Department of Commerce and Department of Homeland Security. You can register here.

Then on March 31 we will host a discussion on debanking and fair access banking laws with: Will Jacquet, a partner at Morgan Lewis and former head of enforcement at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; and Eric Young, senior managing director, Guidepost Solutions, and a former chief compliance officer. You can register here.

• The Supreme Court seems inclined to block states from counting mailed ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive a few days afterward.
   
• Senators said they were closing in on a deal to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security except for the agency that carries out immigrant arrests and deportations, signaling a possible breakthrough after a more than monthlong standoff.
   
• New York City’s LaGuardia Airport reopened Monday afternoon, after a runway collision between a passenger jet and an emergency vehicle killed two pilots and injured dozens of other people.
   
• President Trump’s deportation push is taking an economic toll on mixed-status families
   
• One of American TV’s most familiar catchphrases had a new accent on it this weekend when a group of British comedians shouted, “Live from London, it’s Saturday Night!”

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Send tips to our reporters Max Fillion at max.fillion@dowjones.com, Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com and Richard Vanderford at richard.vanderford@wsj.com.

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