Financial Mindset

Prediction markets are headed for a legal reckoning. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and state regulators are battling over who gets to police the fast-growing platforms, a conflict that could force the Supreme Court to settle the question before the end of next year, according to Flip Pidot, a prediction market executive with nearly 20 years of experience in the industry. “When you have a high-stakes intergovernmental conflict where a federal regulator like the CFTC is opposed in their position to a supermajority of state attorneys general… then that can get the Supreme Court’s attention,” Pidot, the Chief Strategy Officer at PredictIt, told Fortune . In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit sided with Kalshi in its dispute with New Jersey, finding that federal commodities law overrode the state’s gambling laws for the platform’s contracts. The ruling affirmed a lower-court decision allowing Kalshi to continue operating in the state...

In the hills of Emilia-Romagna, a bank vault holds more than half-a-million wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano, worth well over 300 million euros. The vault belongs to the bank Credito Emiliano, known colloquially as Credem, which has accepted young wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano as collateral for loans to local dairy farms since 1953. But now, extreme heat is threatening Italy’s “cheese banks,” and economists who study heat’s effect on growth say the exposure runs well beyond a single vault but into the country’s vineyards, its olive groves, and its broader economy. A blockchain-backed cheese loan collateral program After receiving the wheels of cheese from dairy farmers, a Credem subsidiary, Magazzini Generali delle Tagliate, ages the wheels in two warehouses in Reggio Emilia and Modena. Producers typically receive 60% to 80% of a wheel’s value upfront. But the process has come a long way from the 1950s, as blockchain technology now l...

Airwallex president Lucy Liu invokes a car metaphor to describe one of her company’s newest products. “It’s like assisted driving, like you have in a Tesla ,” she says to describe T:0, an automated bookkeeping system that can run a company’s entire financial department on its own. “You still have someone in the driver’s seat, but the car really drives itself.” T:0 is part of a broader pivot for Airwallex, which got its start in Australia, and has emerged as a major global player in fintech and payments. Like platforms like Wise and Revolut, its business first grew alongside traditional industries that rely on cross-border payments, such as e-commerce, gaming, and online travel. But as AI  changes how companies approach aspects of their business, including subscriptions and payment models, fintech firms like Airwallex are changing too. In late June, Airwallex raised $320 million in a Series H funding round led by Addition, a returning investor, alongside Baillie Gifford, T. ...

Hundreds of commercial flights will be told to change their paths over the northeastern Atlantic Ocean during the next two winters to show how minor altitude adjustments can reduce aviation’s  climate  impact. The British government is backing the landmark airspace-scale trial, launched Tuesday, to avoid creating condensation trails, or contrails. Google UK is contributing its artificial intelligence-powered forecasts to identify the contrail regions. When airplanes fly through cold and humid areas, ice crystals can form around the soot particles emitted from the engine, creating clouds that  trap heat and warm the planet . The Shanwick Oceanic Control Area in the eastern half of the North Atlantic corridor, the location of the trial, is a busy gateway for air traffic between Europe and North America. It’s also a hot spot for where contrails form. The 30-month research program known as Operation Blue Skies includes test periods this winter and nex...

The Department of Defense has ordered 30 U.S. universities to audit their partnerships with mostly Chinese universities and military training institutions as the Trump administration scrutinizes the country’s  growing global influence . If the schools don’t complete a review and terminate any arrangements deemed problematic within the next two weeks, they face losing funding. The goal is to protect taxpayer-funded research from theft and exploitation, the Pentagon said Monday. “The Department of War has zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise our national security,” Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, said in a news release. The release didn’t name the schools, but a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters said they include  Harvard University , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University. The schools didn’t immediately respond to emails...

Surprise U.S. tariffs. A war involving Iran. New American tech bans and Chinese export controls. The list of geopolitical shocks that CEOs must be mindful of, let alone plan for, keeps getting longer. “We’re in a world where all the assumptions about international institutions, free trade, a rules-based order—that’s all going away,” said Dominic Barton, strategic counselor to Eurasia Group and chair of Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. Barton spoke with Fortune days after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on some Canadian goods including autos, dairy, and alcohol. The president had also threatened tariffs in response to wildfire smoke drifting across the border. “Fifteen years ago, there would have probably been diplomats bringing this forward,” he said. “Now it’s just tweeted.” (Just to show how changeable things are, on Aug. 19 Trump announced—on social media—that he will delay the new Canada tariffs by three days as th...

St. Jude  Children’s Research Hospital named Dr. Charles W. M. Roberts its new president and chief executive officer Tuesday, replacing Dr. James R. Downing, who led the nonprofit for 12 years. Roberts, who has been director of St. Jude’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and an executive vice president, will begin his new job on Jan. 1, as Downing moves into a faculty role in the hospital’s Global Pediatric Medicine department. When actor and philanthropist Danny Thomas founded St. Jude in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1962, the survival rate for childhood cancer patients was around 20%. Today, it is more than 80% and Roberts says the hope is for all childhood cancers to be easily treatable someday, with major strides toward that goal are within reach. “I’m really excited because I think we are at the dawn of a new era,” Roberts told The Associated Press in an interview. “In the next several years, I believe we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to achieve much more of Danny’s ...