Securities

  • December 02, 2024

    SEC Taps Former Crypto Chief To Head Litigation Efforts

    The former acting chief of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission unit in charge of overseeing cybersecurity and cryptocurrency-related cases has been promoted to chief litigation counsel, expanding his oversight authority even as a more crypto-friendly administration is slated to enter the Oval Office in January. 

  • December 02, 2024

    Top Promoter Of $58M IcomTech Crypto Ponzi Gets 10 Years

    A Manhattan federal judge hit a Florida cryptocurrency salesman on Monday with a 10-year prison sentence for his role in promoting the $58 million IcomTech Ponzi scheme, saying he victimized others in a "get rich quick" scam and may do so again.

  • December 02, 2024

    Funds Get $30M Payout From SEC's Fight With Fugitive Trader

    A Connecticut federal judge has approved a receiver's plan to distribute $30 million to four Oak Management Corp. funds that were among the victims of a former in-house trader who spent a decade defrauding investors and misappropriating $67 million, court records show.

  • December 02, 2024

    JPMorgan, Tesla Agree To End $162M Suit Over Musk Tweet

    JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Tesla told a New York federal judge on Monday the parties have agreed to voluntarily end JPMorgan's suit alleging Tesla owes it $162 million over expired stock warrants after Tesla CEO Elon Musk mulled taking the company private in an August 2018 tweet.

  • December 02, 2024

    Chancery OKs $345M Fee Award For $55B Musk Pay Fight

    Delaware's chancellor approved a $345 million attorney fee award Monday in the case that scuttled Tesla CEO Elon Musk's 10-year, $55.6 billion compensation plan, rejecting the plaintiff's bid for $5.6 billion in freely tradable company shares and declining to reinstate Musk's proposed pay.

  • December 02, 2024

    Freshfields Lands Onetime SEC Acting Enforcement Head

    Freshfields has added a litigation partner in its Washington, D.C., office who brings with her nearly 17 years of government experience including time as acting director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division, according to a Monday announcement.

  • December 02, 2024

    EB-5 Visa Scam Suit Against Fla. Immigration Atty Ends

    A Florida federal judge on Monday dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit against an immigration attorney over a $500,000 visa scam after the two parties filed a stipulation of dismissal.

  • December 02, 2024

    Australia Passes Public Country-By-Country Reporting

    Multinational businesses with large operations in Australia are required to publicly disclose information about their operations in tax havens as designated by the government under a country-by-country reporting law that lawmakers adopted following a two-year saga over concerns about the data's confidentiality.

  • December 02, 2024

    Ex-Palo Alto Engineer Fights Fraud Conviction At 9th Circ.

    A former Palo Alto Networks engineer urged the Ninth Circuit on Monday to overturn his securities fraud conviction and 18-month prison sentence, arguing that he didn't have a personal relationship with the tipper and so there isn't sufficient evidence to show he traded off of insider information.

  • November 27, 2024

    Zoom Offers SEC $18M To Settle 2020 Privacy Probe

    Zoom Communications disclosed in a U.S. Securities Exchange and Commission filing that it has offered $18 million to settle an agency investigation into "various security, data protection and privacy matters," including the videoconferencing platform's encryption.

  • November 27, 2024

    GM, Cruise Say DPA Has No Bearing On Securities Fraud Suit

    General Motors and its driverless car unit Cruise LLC have told a Michigan federal judge that Cruise's deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice over a San Francisco pedestrian accident doesn't help investors in a proposed securities fraud class action.

  • November 27, 2024

    Law Profs Tell Del. Justices Moelis Appeal Would Blunt DGCL

    Fourteen law professors have urged Delaware's Supreme Court to reject what they branded as a corporate bar effort to use an appeal from a Chancery Court ruling — potentially mooted for future claims by a new law — in order to "enact a sweeping transformation of the way that Delaware's corporate law gets made."

  • November 27, 2024

    Rentokil Hid Terminix Merger Issues, Pension Fund Alleges

    A pension fund claims in a new proposed class action that pest control company Rentokil Initial PLC hid disruptions and challenges during its merger with Terminix Global Holdings Inc. to fully integrating the acquired business, negatively impacting Rentokil's revenue growth as a result.

  • November 27, 2024

    GOP-Led States Accuse BlackRock Of Driving Up Coal Prices

    Texas is leading a coalition of nearly a dozen Republican-led states suing BlackRock Inc. and two other large asset managers for allegedly running an "investment cartel" that takes advantage of their large holdings in publicly traded energy companies to drive up coal prices, a claim that BlackRock has said is "baseless and defies common sense."

  • November 27, 2024

    CFPB Fights Student Loan Servicer's Bid To Pause Deal

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has told a Pennsylvania federal court that student loan servicer Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency shouldn't get to pause its work fulfilling a settlement just because a third party had appealed a separate deal with the loan holders.

  • November 27, 2024

    5th Circ. Reverses Treasury's Block Of Crypto Mixer

    The Fifth Circuit has rejected the government's blacklisting of Tornado Cash for "its role in laundering virtual currency for malicious cyber actors," saying the cryptocurrency service's immutable smart contracts, or lines of privacy-enabling software code, are not "property" and are therefore unownable and cannot be blocked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

  • November 27, 2024

    Ga. CPA Must Pay SEC $850K For Ponzi Scheme Role

    An Atlanta certified public accountant accused of serving as a front man for a convicted former Oppenheimer & Co. adviser's $110 million Ponzi scheme was hit with a money judgment of more than $854,000 by a Georgia federal judge.

  • November 27, 2024

    SEC Exempts More Debt Securities From New Trading Rules

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is relieving broker-dealers who quote unlisted stocks from increased information-gathering requirements that would have also applied to many fixed-income securities, a development attorneys say will prove welcome for debt issuers.

  • November 26, 2024

    GE Inks $362.5M Settlement In Investors' Stock Fraud Suit

    General Electric Co. shareholders asked a Manhattan federal judge to greenlight a $362.5 million settlement resolving long-running litigation on the cusp of trial that alleged the industrial giant's stock price plummeted after it was revealed the company fraudulently concealed cash flow problems.

  • November 26, 2024

    Warner Bros. Hit With Investor Suit Over Failed NBA Deal

    Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. investors Monday filed a proposed class action claiming that the entertainment company and its top brass made false and misleading statements about how negotiations with the NBA were really going and the state of its overall business and financial prospects.

  • November 26, 2024

    2nd Circ. Nixes VR Capital Venezuela Fraud Suit

    The Second Circuit has refused to revive VR Capital's lawsuit accusing Venezuela's state-owned oil company of fraud in connection with its issuance of some $2 billion in since-defaulted bonds, ruling Tuesday that the asset manager hadn't adequately pled its case.

  • November 26, 2024

    Wells Fargo Dodges 2nd Circ. Rehearing In $500M Plunge Suit

    The Second Circuit has rejected a rehearing bid by two investors seeking to revive their proposed class action accusing Wells Fargo Securities LLC of causing a Chicago fund manager lose at least $500 million by wrongfully forcing the liquidation of its mutual fund and other investments.

  • November 26, 2024

    Crypto Miner Can't Get Quick Appeal In SEC Fraud Suit

    A Utah man accused of defrauding crypto mining investors out of $18 million must face the claims that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought against him after a lower court judge on Tuesday declined his request to send the case to the Tenth Circuit.

  • November 26, 2024

    Netflix Ditches Investor Suit Over Account Sharing For Good

    A California federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a proposed class action accusing Netflix and its executives of misleading investors about growth challenges tied to account sharing, concluding "further leave to amend would be futile," since the investor plaintiffs were already given a chance to show that statements made were misleading.

  • November 26, 2024

    Autodesk Wants Out Of Investor Suit Over Internal Controls

    Autodesk Inc. asked a California federal judge on Tuesday to toss a proposed class action alleging the software company's stock price dropped after investors learned it lacked proper internal controls due to issues with its free cash flow and operating margin practices, saying its business plan statements at issue were "forward-looking" and accompanied by "cautionary" language.

Expert Analysis

  • How Methods Are Evolving In Textualist Interpretations

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    Textualists at the U.S. Supreme Court are increasingly considering new methods such as corpus linguistics and surveys to evaluate what a statute's text communicates to an ordinary reader, while lower courts even mull large language models like ChatGPT as supplements, says Kevin Tobia at Georgetown Law.

  • Navigating New Enforcement Scrutiny Of 'AI Washing'

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent lawsuit against Joonko Diversity, its first public AI-focused enforcement action against a private company, underscores the importance of applying the same internal legal and compliance rigor to AI-related claims as other market-facing statements, say attorneys at Fried Frank.

  • How Fund Advisers Can Limit Election Year Pay-To-Play Risks

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    With Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz now the Democratic candidate for vice president, politically active investment advisers should take practical steps to avoid triggering strict pay-to-play rules that can lead to fund managers facing mutli-year timeouts from working with public funds after contributing to sitting officials, say attorneys at Dechert.

  • Why Attorneys Should Consider Community Leadership Roles

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    Volunteering and nonprofit board service are complementary to, but distinct from, traditional pro bono work, and taking on these community leadership roles can produce dividends for lawyers, their firms and the nonprofit causes they support, says Katie Beacham at Kilpatrick.

  • 'Pig Butchering': The Scam That Exploits Crypto Confusion

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    Certain red flags can tip off banks to possible "pig-butchering," and with the scam's increasing popularity, financial institutions need to take action to monitor entry points into the crypto space, detect suspicious activity and provide a necessary backstop to protect customers, say Brandon Essig and Mary Parrish McCracken at Lightfoot Franklin.

  • Opinion

    Agencies Should Reward Corporate Cyber Victim Cooperation

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    The increased regulatory scrutiny on corporate victims of cyberattacks — exemplified by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's case against SolarWinds — should be replaced with a new model that provides adequate incentives for companies to come forward proactively and collaborate with law enforcement, say attorneys at McDermott.

  • 9 Liability Management Tips As Debt Maturity Cliff Looms

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    As the debt maturity cliff swiftly approaches in this challenging environment, attorneys at Winston & Strawn highlight the top considerations for boards of directors and finance professionals to think about when structuring and executing liability management transactions, including reviewing capital structure, evaluating debt covenants, and more.

  • How Transaction Lookbacks Can Guide Fintech Companies

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    As transaction lookbacks continue to be a key focus of enforcement actions, newer financial institutions like fintech companies should know they can benefit from proactively investigating their potential failure to identify suspicious activity, creating a compliance road map and building trust with regulators in the process, say attorneys at Jenner & Block.

  • Firms Must Offer A Trifecta Of Services In Post-Chevron World

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    After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision overturning Chevron deference, law firms will need to integrate litigation, lobbying and communications functions to keep up with the ramifications of the ruling and provide adequate counsel quickly, says Neil Hare at Dentons.

  • 5 Ways Life Sciences Cos. Can Manage Insider Trading Risk

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    In light of two high-profile insider trading jury decisions against life sciences executives this year, public companies in the sector should revise their policies to account for regulators' new and more expansive theories of liability, says Amy Walsh at Orrick.

  • Series

    A Day In The In-House Life: Narmi GC Talks Peak Productivity

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    On a work-from-home day in August, Narmi general counsel Amy Pardee chronicles a typical day in her life in which she organizes her time to tackle everything from advising on products and contract negotiations to volunteering and catching up on the New York Times crossword.

  • How Ripple Final Judgment Fits In Broader Crypto Landscape

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    The Southern District of New York's recent $125 million civil penalty levied in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ripple will have a broad impact on the crypto industry as it was the first to hold that blind sales of digital assets are not securities, even if deemed securities in other circumstances, say attorneys at BakerHostetler.

  • 5 Tips To Succeed In A Master Of Laws Program And Beyond

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    As lawyers and recent law school graduates begin their Master of Laws coursework across the country, they should keep a few pointers in mind to get the most out of their programs and kick-start successful careers in their practice areas, says Kelley Miller at Reed Smith.

  • Series

    After Chevron: SEC Climate And ESG Rules Likely Doomed

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    Under the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Loper Bright, without agency deference, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate disclosure and environmental, social and governance rules would likely be found lacking in statutory support and vacated by the courts, says Justin Chretien at Carlton Fields.

  • Assessing Whether Jarkesy May Limit FINRA Prosecutions

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    The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Jarkesy v. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, holding that civil securities fraud defendants are entitled to jury trials, may cause unpredictable results when applied to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority prosecutions, say Barry Temkin and Kate DiGeronimo at Mound Cotton.

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