Between 2016 and 2021, one-third of the top 90 staff at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission held or traded the shares of firms that the agency was publicly investigating or whose acquisitions it was reviewing, according to The Wall Street Journal’s analysis. Almost a quarter were invested in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle or other tech stocks. (The Wall Street Journal)

Talking point: The FTC says employees were within conflict-of-interest limits. Some of the agency’s most high-profile files in recent years have involved tech M&A or business practices, including cases against Meta and settlements with Google during the period the Journal’s stock-holding analysis covered. Chair Lina Khan, who was appointed to the role by U.S. President Joe Biden in June 2021, is particularly focused on digital-economy competition; both Amazon and Facebook have argued she isn’t a fair regulator for them because of her past work and writings in the field. Canada’s conflict-of-interest disclosure practices would make it difficult to subject officials’ investments to similar scrutiny, since within the public service they typically apply to departmental deputy ministers and agency heads, not other senior staff.