Rishi Sunak’s baby steps on cabinet changes are a reminder he still struggles to take his party with him

Published

2 years ago

September 2, 2023

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Rishi Sunak today sought to put his own stamp on the cabinet, in a way not possible a year ago when he took over.

Yet this reshuffle – which was already in the works in May – took only baby steps towards creating a cabinet truly in Mr Sunak’s image.

Even this level of change immediately provoked rumblings which suggest some of the Conservative Party are not yet ready for a top team that bears his imprint too heavily.

Today has been a stark reminder that, 10 months into the job, sometimes Mr Sunak still struggles to take part of his party with him.

And as a result, he is now likely to have a second reshuffle before the end of the year.

The logic behind the three decisions today tells us much about Mr Sunak.

There is a perfectly sensible reason to replace Ben Wallace with Grant Shapps.

Mr Wallace had qualities that endeared him to many – his affinity with the military, his high standing with Tory members, his willingness to confront the Treasury and other ministers, and his pivotal role over Ukraine.

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But not all of these went down so well in Number 10, who felt this amounted to grandstanding on the world stage and endless demands for cash.

It was no secret in Westminster that the personal relationship between Mr Wallace and Mr Sunak was not the strongest.

So the Shapps appointment represents a different approach.

A fast learner – as any cabinet minister who has had five jobs in the last year can expect to be – he will use this more high-profile approach to project the government’s message more widely.

Senior Tories know they don’t have many top-rank media performers (“it’s a bit eighth series Big Brother”, sighed one) – so an upside of the defence post is that it comes without the burdens of the energy job – where the incumbent risks being dragged into tricksy arguments about climate change and net zero.

Mr Shapps is not known for getting bogged down in fights with cabinet colleagues or arguments with the Treasury.

In general, he is well-liked – and last year was sufficiently confident to launch his own, albeit brief, leadership bid.

Such is the grumpiness of the Tory Party that this closeness is toxic for some, with one member of the government labelling Grant Shapps “an encyclopaedia salesman” – he was a businessman before entering government – and claiming this was a reward for helping to oust Liz Truss.

Yet Mr Sunak will see this as putting the demands of an upcoming election ahead of the need for depth of military or foreign affairs experience – a trade-off he will be comfortable with.

Replacing Mr Shapps in the energy brief is Claire Coutinho, one of the most loyal MPs to Mr Sunak in parliament.

A special adviser when he was chief secretary to the Treasury, a parliamentary aide when he was chancellor, and a senior figure on his campaign team, this former investment banker speaks the prime minister’s language.

As a reward, she becomes the first 2019 intake MP to be catapulted into cabinet.

But she is a relatively unknown figure to many, and there will be an awful lot of Tory MPs who feel there are others (perhaps themselves) with greater qualifications.

She – along with Laura Trott, Victoria Atkins, Laura Farris and the highly tipped David Johnston, who was promoted to Ms Coutinho’s old job – form a new generation of loyalists for the new prime minister.

But many others, bruised by the Truss era, are hostile and suspicious of his decision to promote allies rather than reach across the party to find talent.

Back in May, there were suggestions this reshuffle might spell the end of Therese Coffey, the environment secretary, Steve Barclay, the health secretary, or even Suella Braverman, the home secretary.

What is not clear is whether things will be easier in November than they are now, the last days of August.

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US to get its first XRP-based ETF, launching on NYSE Arca

Published

3 hours ago

April 8, 2025

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US to get its first XRP-based ETF, launching on NYSE Arca

Asset manager Teucrium Investment Advisors is set to launch the first XRP-based exchange-traded fund in the US markets, a leveraged XRP (ETF) on the NYSE Arca.

The Teucrium 2x Long Daily XRP ETF will seek to offer investors two times the daily return of the XRP (XRP) token with a 1.85% management fee and annual expense ratio, according to the company’s website. The XRP-based ETF will trade under the XXRP ticker beginning April 8.

“If you have a short-term high-conviction view on XRP prices, you may consider exploring the Teucrium 2x Long Daily XRP ETF,” the alternative asset manager said.

XXRP currently has $2 million worth of net assets.

Teucrium founder and CEO Sal Gilbertie told Bloomberg on April 7 that investors had shown strong interest in an XRP ETF and hinted that it may file to list more crypto ETFs in the future.

Gilbertie was also pleased that XXRP would launch during a market downturn driven largely by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

“What better time to launch a product than when prices are low?” Gilbertie told Bloomberg.

Likelihood of an approved spot XRP ETF still high: Analyst

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said it was “very odd” to see a new asset’s first ETF come in leveraged form — however, he added that the odds of a spot XRP ETF being approved remain “pretty high.”

Several spot XRP ETF applications from the likes of Grayscale, Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Canary Capital and 21Shares are being reviewed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In February, Balchunas and fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart attributed 65% approval odds to a spot XRP ETF in 2025.

Predictions market Polymarket states there is currently a 75% chance that the SEC will approve a spot XRP ETF in 2025.

Up until recently, ETF issuers would have seen a different environment for filing for XRP ETFs as Ripple Labs — the creators of the XRP token — and the SEC battled out a four-year court battle over XRP’s security status.

That case came to a close last month.

Teucrium has amassed over $310 million worth of assets under management since it was founded in 2010.

It offers mostly agricultural commodities, such as ETFs tracking the likes of corn, soybeans, sugar and wheat.

Magazine: XRP win leaves Ripple and industry with no crypto legal precedent set

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Aussie regulator to shut 95 ‘hydra’ firms linked to crypto, romance scams

Published

5 hours ago

April 8, 2025

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Aussie regulator to shut 95 ‘hydra’ firms linked to crypto, romance scams

Australia’s corporate watchdog has been given the nod to shut down 95 “hydra” companies that it suspects engaged in crypto investment and romance scams, known as “pig butchering.”

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s application to wind up the companies was approved by the Federal Court of Australia on just and equitable grounds after ASIC found that most of the companies had been incorporated with false information.

Many of these companies were set up purporting to provide “genuine services” but were instead believed to be scamming their victims, ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said in an April 8 statement.

“There appears to be a common pattern of scam activity in the nature of ‘pig butchering,’” Justice Angus Stewart said in an April 4 court ruling after looking at 48 “Reviews of Misconduct” from 17 companies accused of facilitating romance scams. The judgment was made on March 21.

Pig butchering scams involve scammers building fake relationships with victims to win their trust before convincing them to invest in a fraudulent crypto or financial scheme.

The securities regulator also suspects that much of the scam activity is coming from Southeast Asia.

Insolvency and restructuring advisers Catherine Conneely and Thomas Birch of Cor Cordis have been appointed as joint liquidators of the 95 companies.

Nearly 1,500 claims by “investors” had been received by the provisional liquidators, amounting to total claims of over $35.8 million, according to the court order.

The claimants are based in 14 countries, including Australia, the US, Cameroon, Ghana, India, Nepal, the Philippines and France.

The provisional liquidators found that only three of the 95 firms had assets to their name and recommended that the other 92 companies be wound up and immediately deregistered.

ASIC shutting down scam websites

ASIC said it has been removing around 130 scam websites each week of late, bringing its total to over 10,000 sites, which have included over 7,200 fake investment platform scams and 1,564 phishing scams.

“However, these scams are like hydras: you shut down one and two more take its place. That’s why we’re warning consumers that the threat of scams and identity fraud remains high. We remind consumers to be vigilant,” Court said.

Australia’s National Anti-Scam Centre recently reported a 26% fall in scam losses to $2 billion in 2024, while the number of scam reports also fell by 17.8% to 494,732.

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SEC crypto trading roundtable to include crypto giants Uniswap, Coinbase

Published

6 hours ago

April 8, 2025

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SEC crypto trading roundtable to include crypto giants Uniswap, Coinbase

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has released the list of executives from US crypto and finance giants that will take part in a roundtable discussion on crypto trading regulation.

On April 7, the regulator said its upcoming April 11 roundtable will discuss how it should handle crypto trading rules, calling it “Between a Block and a Hard Place: Tailoring Regulation for Crypto Trading.”

It will be the second in a series of discussions on crypto, headed by its recently-formed Crypto Task Force.

Taking part are Uniswap Labs chief legal officer Katherine Minarik, Cumberland DRW associate general counsel Chelsea Pizzola and Coinbase institutional product vice president Gregory Tusar — all firms that had once been in the regulator’s scope.

Under the Biden administration, the regulator sued Cumberland DRW in October and Coinbase in June 2023 for alleged securities law violations, but both lawsuits were dropped this year under the Trump administration.

The SEC also started an investigation for possible enforcement action into Uniswap Labs in April 2024, which was dropped in February with no further action.

Also taking part in the roundtable are New York Stock Exchange product chief Jon Herrick, crypto brokerage FalconX business lead Austin Reid, securities tokenizing firm Texture Capital CEO Richard Johnson and the University of California, Berkeley finance chair Christine Parlour.

Dave Lauer, co-founder of the advocacy group We the Investors and Tyler Gellasch, CEO of the not-for-profit Healthy Markets Association, will also take part, while law firm Goodwin Procter partner Nicholas Losurdo will moderate the discussion.

Representing the SEC will be acting chair Mark Uyeda, Crypto Task Force chief of staff Richard Gabbert and Commissioners Caroline Crenshaw and Hester Peirce.

The roundtable is the second crypto-focused discussion in a series of five that the SEC dubbed the “Spring Sprint Toward Crypto Clarity.” The first was on March 21, regarding the legal status of crypto, while three future discussions will cover custody, tokenization, and decentralized finance (DeFi).

SEC’s Uyeda orders review of staff crypto comments

The roundtables come as the SEC, under President Donald Trump, works to revamp its oversight of the crypto industry, with its latest action being to review staff statements on crypto so they can possibly be changed or withdrawn.

Uyeda said in an April 5 statement shared by the SEC on X that due to Trump’s executive order on deregulation and recommendations from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, he was reviewing seven staff statements, five of which concerned crypto.

“The purpose of this review is to identify staff statements that should be modified or rescinded consistent with current agency priorities,” Uyeda said.

The first on the list was an April 2019 analysis from the Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology on how crypto sales could be investment contracts under the securities defining Howey test — an argument the agency had made to sue multiple crypto firms for legal violations.

Also up for review are two Division of Investment Management statements, one from May 2021 asking investors to consider the risks of funds with exposure to Bitcoin futures and a November 2020 statement asking for feedback on whether state-chartered banks meet standards to be qualified custodians.

The SEC will also look into a December 2022 Division of Corporation Finance statement that urged SEC-regulated companies to evaluate their disclosures to mention if a slew of crypto firm bankruptcies and collapses at the time impacted their business.

Finally, the agency will review a Division of Examinations alert from February 2021 that said, “a number of activities related to the offer, sale and trading of digital assets that are securities present unique risks to investors.”

Legal Panel: XRP win leaves Ripple a ‘bad actor’ with no crypto legal precedent set