Securities

  • March 27, 2024

    Real Estate Exec Asks To Toss Shareholder's Self-Dealing Suit

    The president of a real estate management and investment firm asked a California federal court to toss a derivative shareholder suit accusing him of misusing nearly $35 million of company revenue in various ways, including hiring a business he owned with his mistress.

  • March 27, 2024

    Terraform Loses Mistrial Bid After Rakoff Query About 'Lying'

    Manhattan U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff on Wednesday rejected a mistrial bid by counsel for Terraform Labs and creator Do Kwon centering on the judge's move to ask an investor if the bankrupt crypto startup had disclosed potential risks about "lying" to the public.

  • March 27, 2024

    Ex-Barclays, Citi Traders Lose Interest Rate-Rigging Appeals

    Two former traders convicted of manipulating benchmark interest rates lost their bid to clear their names on Wednesday as an English appellate court ruled that they had received fair trials. 

  • March 26, 2024

    Jackson Paints Abortion Clash As Microcosm Of Bigger Brawl

    A war of words Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court over access to abortion medication marked a climactic moment after a lengthy legal slugfest. But probing questions from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson illustrated that the main event for reproductive rights was also simply a single round in a much larger fight over the government's regulatory powers.

  • March 26, 2024

    Stifel Units To Pay FINRA $2.3M Over ETF Supervision Claims

    Broker-dealer Stifel Nicolaus & Co. Inc. and an affiliated firm have agreed to pay $2.3 million in fines and restitution to settle the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's allegations that they failed to properly supervise certain nontraditional exchange-traded funds, causing losses for clients, including seniors.

  • March 26, 2024

    8th Circ. Urged To Freeze SEC Climate Rules Once More

    An energy company suing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over its recently finalized climate disclosure rules urged the Eighth Circuit on Tuesday to stay the implementation of the rules, after a stay granted by the Fifth Circuit was recently lifted following the consolidation of various related lawsuits.

  • March 26, 2024

    Banker Describes Confidential Work In 'Shadow Trading' Trial

    An Evercore investment banker who worked on Medivation's 2016 sale to Pfizer testified Tuesday in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's novel "shadow trading" trial, saying the defendant was involved in a confidential process that identified biopharma company Incyte as comparable to Medivation — information the defendant is accused of trading on.

  • March 26, 2024

    Pennsylvania, Crypto Miner Sued Over Enviro Contamination

    A Pennsylvania environmental group sued the Keystone State and a crypto-mining company Tuesday in Philadelphia County Court accusing the state of failing to protect its residents from the company's purported six million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

  • March 26, 2024

    Judge To Let McDermott Investors Seek 2-Subclass Cert.

    A Texas federal judge has declined to certify a proposed class of investors in energy industry engineering company McDermott International Inc., siding with a magistrate judge who recommended dismissing the class certification bid so the investors could refile and seek certification for two investor subclasses.

  • March 26, 2024

    Wells Fargo Unit Can Send $500M Fund Plunge Suit To NY

    An Illinois federal judge said Wells Fargo Securities LLC can transfer to New York federal court a suit accusing it of losing at least $500 million of a hedge fund's value in a wrong-way bet on the markets, since an identical class action is currently pending there.

  • March 26, 2024

    SPAC 'Frenzy' Led To $1.6B Deal For Dog Treat Co., Suit Says

    Shareholders of a special-purpose acquisition company that merged with dog-treat box company BarkBox in a $1.6 billion deal have sued the executives and directors of both entities, alleging they breached their fiduciary duties in connection with what the complaint calls "an extreme example of the 'churn-and-burn' SPAC frenzy."

  • March 26, 2024

    Trailblazing SEC Commissioner Roberta Karmel Dies At 86

    Roberta Karmel, a well-regarded legal scholar who pushed back against early-career sexism to become the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's first female commissioner, died over the weekend at the age of 86, according to the law school where she taught for decades.

  • March 26, 2024

    Indicted Exec Wants Suit Tossed For Prosecutors' Misconduct

    A former healthcare CEO indicted on novel insider trading charges is trying once again to have the case tossed from California federal court, this time accusing prosecutors of improperly contacting a represented party in a separate but related civil case, weeks after a previous attempt to duck the charges failed.

  • March 26, 2024

    FTX Says Millions In Ch. 11 Token Claims Should Be Zeroed

    Cryptocurrency exchange FTX Trading Ltd. argued in court Tuesday that a Delaware bankruptcy judge should estimate the claims of customers holding some digital tokens at a heavy discount for Chapter 11 purposes, including zeroing out hundreds of millions of dollars in token value.

  • March 26, 2024

    AI Weapons Detector Faces Investor Suit After Gov't Probes

    Evolv Technologies, which makes metal detectors that purportedly use artificial intelligence to detect weapons, is facing a proposed shareholder class action in Massachusetts federal court alleging that false claims about its products' abilities to screen for types of tactical knives and guns led to federal investigations and share declines.

  • March 26, 2024

    Terraform Backer Tells Jury His Firm Lost Big On $36M Stake

    A Boston venture capitalist told the Manhattan federal jury hearing fraud claims against Terraform Labs and its creator Do Kwon on Tuesday that his former company confidently invested $35.9 million in the crypto startup based on representations that regulators say were false.

  • March 26, 2024

    Mitsubishi Seeks $88.9M From Canadian Truck Sellers In US

    Mitsubishi's commercial financing arm has asked federal judges in Connecticut, Illinois and New York to issue at least $89 million in judgments against two individuals in Canada, saying the men in question breached promises to stand behind credit lines extended to two companies that sell tractor trailers and lease equipment.

  • March 26, 2024

    GOP Lawmakers Push Gensler To Clarify SEC Stance On Ether

    Nearly 50 House Republicans called on U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler to explain his agency's views on the ethereum network's token after a firm apparently only cleared to safeguard digital asset securities announced its intention to support ETH.

  • March 26, 2024

    SPAC Investors Misled In $1.35B Stem Deal, Del. Suit Says

    A former stockholder of a blank-check company that merged with intelligent energy storage business Stem Inc. filed a proposed class action in Delaware's Court of Chancery Tuesday, alleging breaches of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment in connection with the April 2021 merger.

  • March 26, 2024

    Texas AG Scores 'Huge Victory' With Securities Fraud Deal

    A deal announced Tuesday that ended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's nearly decadelong securities fraud case is a significant win for the chief legal officer, who avoided a potentially messy trial in a case that experts told Law360 might have been weaker than prosecutors had hoped.

  • March 26, 2024

    Jurisdiction Snafu Sinks US Bank Exec's Second Firing Suit

    A former U.S. Bank managing director has lost a second lawsuit challenging his firing, after a Colorado federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the executive is precluded from bringing a wrongful termination claim after a procedural misstep in the first case.

  • March 26, 2024

    SEC Says Ripple's 'Egregiousness' Warrants $2B Sanction

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has told a New York federal court that blockchain firm Ripple Labs Inc. ramped up sales of its XRP token after the agency launched its enforcement action and engaged in a "public relations campaign to deflect blame from its conduct," warranting nearly $2 billion in sanctions.

  • March 26, 2024

    SEC To Settle Fraud Suit With CEO Of North Carolina CBD Co.

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the North Carolina CBD company CEO it accused of self-dealing and defrauding investors in a fund he ran has asked a federal judge to pause the government's case, telling the court they have reached a settlement.

  • March 26, 2024

    Men Let Off $114M Fraud Fight Feds Dismissal Pause

    A group of men who a Texas judge recently let off federal criminal charges of illegally manipulating stock prices has urged the court to reject prosecutors' attempt to pause dismissal of the case, arguing there is no justification for the move.

  • March 26, 2024

    Pot Co. Withholding Fees Despite Court Order, Chancery Told

    Three former directors of Left Coast Ventures Inc. say the cannabis company still hasn't advanced their legal defense fees for a merger-related lawsuit despite a court order to do so, and are now seeking help from Delaware's Court of Chancery to get the bills paid.

Expert Analysis

  • Spartan Arbitration Tactics Against Well-Funded Opponents

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    Like the ancient Spartans who held off a numerically superior Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae, trial attorneys and clients faced with arbitration against an opponent with a bigger war chest can take a strategic approach to create a pass to victory, say Kostas Katsiris and Benjamin Argyle at Venable.

  • How Private Funds Can Navigate New FinCEN Reporting Rules

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    In light of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network's new regulations implementing beneficial ownership reporting requirements, private fund managers must assess whether certain obligations apply to entities within their structures and whether potential structural changes could simplify those obligations, say attorneys at Winston & Strawn.

  • How AI May Be Used In Fintech Fraud — And Fraud Detection

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    Recent enforcement actions in the fintech and finance industries show that the government is increasingly pursuing fraud enabled by artificial intelligence — at the same time it’s using AI innovations to enforce regulations and investigate fraud, say attorneys at ArentFox Schiff.

  • What Recent Study Shows About AI's Promise For Legal Tasks

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    Amid both skepticism and excitement about the promise of generative artificial intelligence in legal contexts, the first randomized controlled trial studying its impact on basic lawyering tasks shows mixed but promising results, and underscores the need for attorneys to proactively engage with AI, says Daniel Schwarcz at University of Minnesota Law School.

  • Innodata Suit Highlights 'AI Washing' Liability Risk For Cos.

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    A class action against software company Innodata over so-called AI washing, one of the first of its kind, underscores the litigation and enforcement risks that can arise from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's novel theory about misleading artificial intelligence capabilities, say attorneys at Bracewell.

  • Tips For CCOs Submitting Annual Compliance Reports

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    Recent settlement actions by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, coupled with statements made by both CFTC and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission leadership, demonstrate why this year's chief compliance officer annual report filing is no ordinary exercise, and highlight the increasing importance of the report and its usage, say attorneys at Steptoe.

  • Fintech 'Prenups': Planning For A Card Program Breakup

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    After a year of economic downturns, some banks and their fintech partners are realizing they may have rushed to the altar without a good prenup, but planning ahead can curb both foreseeable and unexpected issues in the event of a termination of a bank-fintech card-issuing agreement, say Andrew Grant at Ketsal and Richard Malish at Community Federal Savings Bank.

  • SEC's Final Climate Disclosure Rules: What Cos. Must Know

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    While the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's scaled-back final rules requiring public companies to disclose certain climate-related information still face challenges in court, companies should begin preparing now to comply with the rules, say Celia Soehner and Erin Martin at Morgan Lewis.

  • Caremark 2.0 Lends Shareholders Agency Against Polluters

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    The Caremark doctrine has been liberalized by recent Delaware court decisions into what some have termed a 2.0 version, making derivative cases against corporations far more plausible and invigorating oversight duty on environmental risks like toxic spills and air pollution, say Joshua Margolin and Sean Goldman-Hunt at Selendy Gay.

  • BIPA's Statutory Exemptions Post-Healthcare Ruling

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    The Illinois Supreme Court's November opinion in Mosby v. Ingalls Memorial Hospital, which held that the Biometric Information Privacy Act's healthcare exemption also applies when information is collected from healthcare workers, is a major win for healthcare defendants that resolves an important question of statutory interpretation, say attorneys at Quinn Emanuel.

  • 2nd Circ.'s Nine West Ruling Clarifies Safe Harbor Confusion

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    The Second Circuit’s recent ruling in Nine West’s Chapter 11 suit clarifies that courts in the circuit will apply a transfer-by-transfer analysis to determine the applicability of Section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code, and that to be safe harbored, a financial institution must act as an agent with respect to the specific transfer at issue, says Leonardo Trivigno at Carter Ledyard.

  • Opinion

    European Union Criticisms Of The FCPA Are Misguided

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    Some in the European Union have criticized U.S. enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for what they perceive as jurisdictional overreach, but this appears to overlook the crucial fact that jurisdiction is voluntary, and critics should focus instead on the lack of equivalent laws in their own region, say John Joy and YuTong Wang at FTI Law.

  • What Fed's Credit-Linked Note FAQ Means For Capital Relief

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    U.S. banks that seek to mitigate their loss of liquidity under the Basel III capital requirements by issuing direct credit-linked notes should turn to recent Federal Reserve FAQs for insight into how this new use of synthetic securitizations may reshape risk and regulation in the U.S. market, says Cris Cicala at Stinson.

  • Wildfire Challenges For Utility Investors: Regs And Financing

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    For investors in public utilities, wildfire liability considerations include not only regulatory complexities, but also bankruptcy claims resolution, financing judgments and settlements, and how to leverage organizational structures to maximize investment protections, say David Botter and Lisa Schweitzer at Cleary.

  • Del. Dispatch: How Moelis Upends Stockholder Agreements

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    The Delaware Court of Chancery's Moelis decision last month upended the standard corporate practice of providing governance rights in stockholder agreements and adds to a recent line of surprising decisions holding that long-standing, common market practices violate Delaware law, say attorneys at Fried Frank.

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