Demonstrating its continued focus on cybersecurity enforcement, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced three new actions on Aug. 30 charging eight firms with maintaining deficient cybersecurity policies and...more
Securities fraud litigation based on regulatory mishaps, environmental disasters, data breaches, sexual harassment revelations, the COVID-19 pandemic and other well-publicized events that affect stock prices has been on the...more
9/3/2021
/ Anti-Money Laundering ,
Class Action ,
Duty to Disclose ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Federal Pleading Requirements ,
Financial Statements ,
Material Misstatements ,
Money Laundering ,
Puffery ,
Securities Fraud ,
Shareholder Litigation ,
Stock Drop Litigation
On July 13, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced partially settled charges against the Special Purpose Acquisition Company Stable Road Acquisition Co. (SRA), SRA’s sponsor and CEO, SRA’s target Momentus Inc....more
On June 14, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a $490,000 settlement with the real estate services provider First American Financial Corporation (First American) for violations of disclosure controls and...more
On June 7, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it seized 63.7 of the 75 bitcoins paid by Colonial Pipeline to ransomware attackers last month. The recovered bitcoins were valued at $2.3 million at the time of...more
6/10/2021
/ Asset Seizure ,
Bitcoin ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cybersecurity ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
FBI ,
Hackers ,
Infrastructure ,
Oil & Gas ,
Pipelines ,
Popular ,
Ransomware ,
Supply Chain
On March 5, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it had charged AT&T and three of its midlevel investor relations executives with violating Regulation FD, a rule that bars issuers from selectively...more
Introduction -
On Feb. 2, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a cease-and-desist order settling charges against the former CEO and CFO of WageWorks Inc. (WageWorks, or the Company), stemming from the...more
2/22/2021
/ Cease and Desist Orders ,
Compensation & Benefits ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Dodd-Frank ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Executive Compensation ,
Financial Statements ,
Incentive Compensation ,
Reimbursements ,
Sarbanes-Oxley ,
Section 304 ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Violations
On November 23, 2020, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion by Judge Jon O. Newman in Packer v. Raging Capital Management, reversing a magistrate judge’s summary judgment order that had found Raging Capital...more
12/1/2020
/ 16(b) ,
Beneficial Owner ,
Disgorgement ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Hedge Funds ,
Investment Adviser ,
Ownership Interest ,
Securities Exchange Act ,
Securities Regulation ,
Short-Swing Trading ,
Stock Purchase Agreement
On Oct. 30, 2020, the United Kingdom’s data protection authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), in connection with France’s Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL), announced the largest...more
11/5/2020
/ British Airways ,
CNIL ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Breach ,
Data Protection ,
Enforcement Actions ,
EU ,
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ,
Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) ,
Marriott ,
Popular
Three years ago, in a footnote to its unanimous opinion in Kokesh v. S.E.C., the Supreme Court left open two questions: “whether courts possess authority to order disgorgement in SEC enforcement proceedings” and “whether...more
In a 63-page decision issued on Jan. 13, 2020, in Lebanon County Employees’ Retirement Fund v. AmerisourceBergen Corporation, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster of the Delaware Court of Chancery found that stockholders of...more
1/28/2020
/ Books & Records ,
Controlled Substances ,
Controlled Substances Act ,
Corporate Governance ,
DEA ,
Delaware General Corporation Law ,
Demand Letter ,
Depositions ,
Discovery ,
Drug & Alcohol Abuse ,
Drug Distribution ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Government Investigations ,
Inspection Rights ,
License Suspensions ,
Litigation Strategies ,
Opioid ,
Pain Management ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Popular ,
Prescription Drugs ,
Rule 30(b)(6) ,
Sales & Distribution Agreements ,
Section 220 Request ,
Shareholder Litigation ,
Shareholders ,
Split of Authority
In its 2011 Janus decision, the Supreme Court emphasized that SEC Rule 10b-5 imposes liability for a false statement in connection with a securities transaction only on the “maker” of the statement, the “person or entity with...more
4/3/2019
/ Appeals ,
Enforcement Actions ,
False Statements ,
Fines ,
Intent to Defraud ,
Investment Banks ,
Lorenzo v SEC ,
Material Dissemination ,
Misleading Statements ,
Reaffirmation ,
Rule 10b-5 ,
SCOTUS ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Violations ,
Suspensions
On Jan. 21, 2019, the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) levied a 50 million euros sanction against Google LLC for violating the EU General Data Protection Regulation2 (GDPR) in the context of the first enforcement...more
2/27/2019
/ CNIL ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Data Protection ,
Enforcement Actions ,
EU Data Protection Laws ,
Fines ,
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ,
Google ,
Personal Data ,
Popular ,
Prior Express Consent ,
Regulatory Violations ,
Transparency
Danske Bank is likely to again become the target of a formal investigation in France. A Paris court began investigating Danske Bank in October 2017 in relation to transactions of its Estonian branch, between 2008 and 2011,...more
2/1/2019
/ Corruption ,
Danske Bank ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Estonia ,
EU ,
Financial Transactions ,
France ,
Investigations ,
Money Laundering ,
Reasonable Suspicion ,
Regulatory Violations ,
White Collar Crimes
In a speech delivered on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein described important changes to DOJ policies for awarding cooperation credit in corporate investigations. These changes have been...more
12/4/2018
/ Cooperation Agreement ,
Corporate Investigations ,
Corruption ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) ,
Government Investigations ,
Individual Accountability ,
Policy Statement ,
White Collar Crimes ,
Willful Misconduct ,
Yates Memorandum
On June 21, 2018, the Supreme Court in Raymond J. Lucia, et al. v. SEC, held that the SEC’s administrative law judges are “Officers of the United States” whose appointment must comport with the requirements of the...more
6/29/2018
/ Administrative Agencies ,
Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ,
Administrative Proceedings ,
Appeals ,
Appointments Clause ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Final Written Decisions ,
Lucia v SEC ,
Officers of the United States ,
Remand ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Violations ,
Special Trial Judges (STJs)
After months of steadily increasing supervisory activity in regard to the emerging cryptocurrency sector, it now appears that U.S. financial market regulators may have switched gears and entered the enforcement stage....more
4/2/2018
/ Bitcoin ,
Blockchain ,
CFTC ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Digital Currency ,
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Initial Coin Offering (ICOs) ,
Initial Public Offering (IPO) ,
Regulatory Oversight ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Token Sales ,
Virtual Currency
On March 1, 2018, John P. Cronan, the acting head of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, and Benjamin Singer, Chief of the Fraud Section’s Securities and Financial Fraud Unit, announced at the American Bar...more
On June 26, 2017, the D.C. Circuit, en banc, split 5-to-5 on whether to grant a petition seeking to overturn an August 2016 ruling by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit that determined that SEC administrative law judges...more
In a pair of decisions issued on June 5, the Supreme Court sharply curtailed the scope of financial sanctions available in civil securities enforcement and criminal drug trafficking cases. In addition to the results, which...more
6/9/2017
/ Disgorgement ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Financial Services Industry ,
Forfeiture ,
Forfeiture Statutes ,
Honeycutt v. United States ,
Investment Management ,
Joint and Several Liability ,
Kokesh v SEC ,
Misappropriation ,
SCOTUS ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Violations ,
Statute of Limitations ,
White Collar Crimes