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Banking
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May 24, 2013
Rebounding 3i Wants Barclays European Infrastructure Unit
3i Group PLC has lobbed a buyout bid at Barclays PLC's European infrastructure fund management unit, it said Friday, marking the latest move for the flagging British investment firm that is slowly picking up steam amid shareholder scrutiny.
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May 23, 2013
Obama Nominates 2 Senate Aides As SEC Commissioners
President Barack Obama on Thursday nominated two senior Senate aides to serve as commissioners for the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to an announcement from the White House.
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May 23, 2013
11th Circ. Backs Wells Fargo Win In Mortgage Transfer Case
The Eleventh Circuit on Thursday dismissed a proposed class action brought by a mortgage holder who claimed Wells Fargo Bank NA violated the Truth in Lending Act by failing to notify her of a transfer in ownership of her mortgage loan.
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May 23, 2013
FDIC Wins Malpractice Suit Against Law Firm Over $5M Loan
A Florida federal jury Wednesday sided with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in its malpractice suit against Icard Merrill Cullis Timm Furen & Ginsburg over the firm's representation of a developer in a $5.3 million real estate loan.
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May 23, 2013
Retail Giants Sue Visa, MasterCard After Spurning $7B Deal
Target Corp., Macy's Inc. and 16 other U.S. retailers sued Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. on Thursday over allegedly anti-competitive credit and debit card transaction fees, two days after announcing they had opted out of a $7.25 billion settlement in related multidistrict litigation.
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May 23, 2013
LeClairRyan Adds Litchfield Cavo Finance, Bankruptcy Atty
LeClairRyan said Monday it has landed for its Boston office a Litchfield Cavo LLP commercial litigator who specializes in lender liability and insurance defense as well as bankruptcy matters.
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May 23, 2013
Blackstone Teams With Prologis On $960M Industrial Deal
The Blackstone Group LP and Prologis Inc. are teaming up to make a $960 million purchase of a massive U.S. industrial portfolio from a venture led by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., sources confirmed to Law360 on Thursday.
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May 23, 2013
Regulator Cites Flaws In Ernst & Young Procedures
The top U.S. accounting watchdog on Thursday said that Ernst & Young LLP did not independently verify data provided by executives at companies the firm audited and failed to correct problems with its audit procedures even after the agency ordered it to do so.
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May 23, 2013
Bankrupt REIT Gets $50M In Deal With BlackRock, Lenders
A New York bankruptcy judge on Thursday approved a settlement that BlackRock Inc.'s bankrupt real estate investment trust Anthracite Capital Inc. reached with BlackRock and two banks, allowing Anthracite to bring in $50 million and begin winding down the estate.
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May 23, 2013
NY Appeals Court Won't Cut BofA Faulty Underwriting Claims
A New York state appeals court refused Wednesday to dismiss claims against several Bank of America Corp. units in a putative class action over allegedly loose mortgage underwriting standards, saying the plaintiff had sufficiently alleged she had signed a release of claims under duress.
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May 23, 2013
JPMorgan Unit Fined $4.6M In UK
British regulators on Thursday fined JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s wealth management unit with a £3 million ($4.6 million) fine for failing to prove they have proper systems in place to give high net-worth clients proper financial advice.
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May 23, 2013
US Should Sanction Foreign Cos. For IP Theft, Report Says
The U.S. response to the rampant theft of American intellectual property, especially by Chinese business and governmental entities, is inadequate, and new measures such as sanctions on foreign companies that use stolen IP are needed, a bipartisan commission said Wednesday.
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May 23, 2013
ResCap Gets $2.1B From Ally To Settle Creditor Claims
Ally Financial Inc. will pay $2.1 billion to win peace with creditors of its former mortgage subsidiary, bankrupt Residential Capital LLC, nearly triple the auto lender’s original settlement offer, according to documents filed Thursday in New York bankruptcy court.
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May 23, 2013
Banks, Exchanges Urge Fed. Circ. To Uphold RealTime Ruling
An elite roster of the world's investment banks, securities exchanges and financial publications urged the Federal Circuit on Monday to affirm lower court rulings that they hadn't infringed data-compression patents held by software company RealTime Data LLC.
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May 23, 2013
Deals Rumor Mill: Yankee Candle, THL Partners, Volvo
Madison Dearborn is scrapping plans to unload Yankee Candle Co. after prospective private equity buyers refused to make multibillion-dollar offers for the company, while Volvo is considering a spinoff of its North American heavy truck unit that could yield as much as $1.5 billion.
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May 22, 2013
Citadel Securities Says CBOE Overcharged Trading Fees
The Chicago Board Options Exchange Inc. and four other exchanges were hit with a lawsuit Wednesday by investment companies including Citadel Securities LLC accusing the exchanges of brazenly admitting they had mischarged them fees on trading orders but then deflecting liability for it.
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May 22, 2013
Dems Back CFTC's Firmer Hand On Int'l Swaps Rules
Six Democratic senators on Wednesday prodded the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to stay the course on its new guidelines for the international derivatives market, calling similar rules proposed by securities regulators "inadequate."
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May 22, 2013
UBS Ruling Allays Fear Factor For SEC Whistleblowers
A New York federal court ruling Tuesday that keeps alive a UBS AG whistleblower’s retaliation suit marks a key victory for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as it looks to make reporting Wall Street fraud less intimidating, attorneys say.
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May 22, 2013
Bank Software Developer Faces Suit Over Trade Secret Theft
Spear Marketing Inc. launched a Texas state court suit Monday alleging ARGO Data Resource Corp. used corporate espionage to steal its proprietary bank cash management system, following a federal judge's decision last week refusing to remand a related suit.
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May 22, 2013
9th Circ. Won't Revive BofA Debit Card Fee Suit
A proposed class of Bank of America NA customers failed Wednesday to revive their suit over the bank's service fees for payroll debit cards, after the Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court's ruling that the National Bank Act preempts the suit's state law fraud and unfair competition claims.
Expert Analysis
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The SEC's Holistic Approach To Cross-Border Swaps
A potentially significant difference from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission approach to cross-border security-based swap transactions is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's take on “substituted compliance.” The SEC apparently intends to apply a holistic approach, focusing on equivalence of regulatory outcomes, rather than a precise rule-by-rule comparison, say attorneys with Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson LLP.
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Pitfalls For Lenders Redeeming Ala. Property
In First United Security Bank v. McCollum, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals addressed the rights of a lender that redeems property sold at a tax sale as a result of its borrower’s failure to pay his property taxes. In certain situations, the decision will penalize lenders and awards property owners with a financial windfall, says Jack Kubiszyn of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP.
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More 'Dark Pools' Deepen Litigation Issues
Not surprisingly, dark pools are beginning to crop up in litigation settings. More cases are focusing on the misuse of information contained in dark pool trades, as well as dark pools acting as conduits to insider trading. In fact, there appears to be a correlation between the growth of dark pools and the number of criminal insider trading cases brought by government officials, says Adam Werner of Berkeley Economic Consulting.
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Rise Of The Machines — Predictive Coding Goes Mainstream
The pros of using predictive coding far outweigh the cons. Given the heavy pressure on law firms and in-house counsel to reduce discovery costs, as well as the Justice Department's recent stance on the subject, it appears predictive coding will continue to emerge from the obscure world of legal technology to the mainstream of legal practice, say Michael Moscato and Myles Bartley of Curtis Mallet-Prevost Colt & Mosle LLP.
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Unprecedented FCPA Wake-Up Call For US Broker-Dealers
The extraordinary criminal bribery charges against two registered representatives of a U.S. broker-dealer and a high-level Venezuelan government official highlight that a broker-dealer’s anti-money laundering procedures, as well as oversight of their registered people, should have a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act component if the firm is doing international business, say attorneys with Duane Morris LLP.
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Libor Litigation Must Overcome Significant Obstacles
When U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald dismissed a consolidated, multidistrict batch of antitrust and racketeering suits in Manhattan earlier this spring, she suggested plaintiffs seeking to recover from banking giants at the heart of the interest rate-fixing scandal might have better luck with securities fraud claims. But those plaintiffs will need to be lucky indeed. Two recent developments show that obstacles are inherent and, perhaps, insurmountable, say attorneys with Choate Hall & Stewart LLP.
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SEC Eyes Advisory Contract Approval Disclosures
A recent settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by mutual fund directors and service providers answers a number of questions for many in the mutual fund industry and provides insight into SEC enforcement priorities, say attorneys with Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP.
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How The Fed's Stress Test Rules Mitigate Systemic Risk
The savings and loan holding company regulatory regime established by the Dodd-Frank Act appears to be having the ultimate effect of reducing the number of SLHCs, especially those that are predominantly insurance enterprises, say attorneys with Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.
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The Who, What And Why Of Public-Private Partnerships
Public-private partnerships have been used in a wide range of sectors to provide public services, from power plants and railroads to hospitals and sanitation plants. Yet there are a variety of potential contractual arrangements and the financing of a PPP can be complex, say Maryam Khosharay and Herbert Glaser of Haynes and Boone LLP.
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A Tale Of 2 Burdens Of Proof In Ch. 11
As a matter of strategy, it can be vital to understand the differing burdens of proof under various provisions of the Bankruptcy Code and when those burdens shift. For example, the Southern District of New York recently clarified the distinction between section 362(d) and 363(e) burdens of proof in In re AMR Corp., say attorneys with Duane Morris LLP.