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Expert Analysis

  • UK Joint Ventures: Sanctions And Corruption Risks

    Miriam Gonzalez

    What should be at the forefront of the mind of any in-house counsel or compliance officer whose company operates in joint ventures is section 7 of the U.K. Bribery Act, which holds that an organization does not even need to be aware of corrupt conduct in order to be guilty of an offense, say attorneys with Dechert LLP.

  • Another Usury Exemption For California Lenders

    Brian D. Lauter

    When Californians first passed an initiative precluding the charging of “usurious” interest in 1918, they could hardly have imagined the ever-more sophisticated schemes and exceptions allowing lenders to charge interest exponentially higher than the stated maximum rate of 10 percent. In Bock v. California Capital Loan Inc., a California Court of Appeal recently introduced yet another exception to a seemingly simple prohibition, say Brian Lauter and Mark Madnick of Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi LLP.

  • Lehman Derivative Litigation Still Looms Large

    Steven J. Fink

    The market’s attention is fixed firmly on the future of derivatives. Questions about the Dodd Frank requirements, and to what extent the use of swaps in structured finance and other transactions will return, are front and center. And yet, there are also lessons to be learned from the past use of these somewhat esoteric financial instruments, which continue to be tested in litigation — with more to come on the Lehman front, say attorneys with Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

  • New Dark Pool Regulation On The Horizon

    Christina N. Davilas

    Dark pool operators readying for new governance might give advance thought to the trading system build-outs that may be necessary to comply with a price improvement rule. Additionally, they may take an introspective look at how they use their customer’s trading information and what they disclose to customers about such use, as well as their surveillance systems to identify areas warranting improvement, says Christina Davilas of Bingham McCutchen LLP.

  • Is TAR Right For Your Discovery Project?

    Michele C.S. Lange

    There are several critical decision factors to weigh to assess whether Technology Assisted Review is right for a discovery project — for example, the nature of the case, internal capabilities, production considerations and overall comfort with this technology, say Michele Lange and Joseph White of Kroll Ontrack Inc.

  • Catch Me If You Can: How To Serve Foreign Defendants

    Robert S. McWhorter

    You are sitting at your desk when your client calls to tell you that his or her customer breached an agreement. As you do your intake, you ask where the customer resides. You learn that the potential defendant has recently moved to “Country X.” Suddenly, what first appeared to be a simple breach of contract case has become a venture into the exotic world of international service of process and jurisdiction, say attorneys with Nossaman LLP.

  • Class Arbitration Is Back In Arbitrators’ Hands

    Christopher King

    Arbitrators can still interpret contracts pretty much any way they want, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter. The holding should come as no great surprise as it reflects decades of federal arbitration law, yet the unanimous ruling is a surprise, given what preceded it, says Christopher King of Homer Bonner Jacobs.

  • Distressed Investing In Cyprus: The Cyprio Bank Bail-In

    Andrew M. Martin

    The current consensus is that investment opportunities in Cyprus are unlikely to evolve into a full-fledged claims-trading market similar to the recent experience in Iceland. But no one is betting against the power of markets to evolve once buyers and sellers negotiate pricing, transfer structures begin to evolve and distressed documentation, tailored to acquiring Cypriot bank deposits, is put in draft, say attorneys with Richards Kibbe & Orbe LLP.

  • An Oasis Of Liquidity In An Arid Economic Environment

    Stephen M. Fields

    The unprecedented unmet demand for capital by businesses of all types and sizes has adversely impacted job creation and stifled growth, innovation, modernization and exports. This situation has compelled an otherwise highly partisan Congress to coalesce behind one of the few federal programs designed to alleviate these problems — the Small Business Investment Company Program, says Stephen Fields of Dentons US LLP.

  • SEC’s Golden Years Of Accounting-Fraud Cases May Be Over

    Andrew J. Morris

    In the years since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last placed major emphasis on accounting fraud, the world of financial reporting has changed. In 2013, the SEC faces different challenges, and probably more difficult ones, says Andrew Morris of Morvillo LLP.