Many of the federal regulators charged with overseeing major tech companies reportedly invest heavily in those companies, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
This Journal this week revealed in a bombshell report that a sizable portion of "senior officials" at the Federal Trade Commission "owned or traded stock in companies that were undergoing an FTC merger review or investigation."
Officials "were most heavily invested in technology," the Journal said, noting that tech "has come under increasing scrutiny by the agency" in recent years.
"Nearly one in four top FTC officials owned or traded individual stocks of tech companies such as Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp.," the Journal reported.
A spokesman for the federal agency told the newspaper that the bureau has a "robust ethics program" and have followed the law, though the spox argued that in the end the commission relies on the investor in question to certifying no laws have been broken.
“Ultimately, it is the filer’s obligation to comply with the rules,” the spokesman told the paper.
