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Securities
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May 21, 2013
NFP Directors Sued Over $1.3B Madison Dearborn Deal
The directors and executives of brokerage services firm National Financial Partners Corp. were hit with a proposed shareholder class action Tuesday over its April deal to be acquired by private equity investment firm Madison Dearborn Partners LLC for $1.3 billion.
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May 21, 2013
Thompson & Knight Dodges $2.5M Shareholder Fraud Appeal
A Texas appeals court declined Tuesday to revive a $2.5 million suit against Thompson & Knight LLP that alleged the firm helped a defunct home theater business transfer assets to a new venture and cut shareholders out of their investment in the company.
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May 21, 2013
Dreier Investors Say Profits Weren't Part Of Ponzi Scheme
Attorneys for two investors being sued for millions by Dreier LLP's Chapter 11 trustee told a New York bankruptcy judge Tuesday that the trustee can't prove that the profits they received from their investments in the defunct firm were part of a Ponzi scheme.
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May 21, 2013
EU Oil Price-Fixing Probe Could Rival Libor Scandal
The European Commission's probe of alleged manipulation of crude oil benchmark prices has expanded beyond major oil companies to include energy trading firms, in a crackdown experts say could echo the ongoing Libor scandal in both its sprawling scope and the avalanche of litigation it could bring from energy consumers.
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May 21, 2013
Watchdog Report Faults CFTC Head's MF Global Recusal
U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler disregarded legal advice and needlessly recused himself from matters relating to MF Global Holdings Ltd. in November 2011 over concerns about his personal ties to then-CEO Jon Corzine, according to a Tuesday report.
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May 21, 2013
Lion Capital Head Pleads Guilty To $1.3M Fraud Scheme
The former operator of Lion Capital Management LLC pled guilty Tuesday to four felony mail and wire fraud counts in connection with a scheme in which he told investors he would put $1.3 million into a hedge fund, but instead spent the money on himself.
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May 21, 2013
Miami Law Firm Helped Run Ponzi Scheme, Investor Says
A Wisconsin man sued Miami attorney Jeffrey Tew and his firm Tew Cardenas LLP in Florida state court Thursday, claiming they helped a businessman set up and run what was effectively a Ponzi scheme based on fraudulent real estate investments in Costa Rica.
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May 21, 2013
Ill. Pension Fund Slaps AIG With Securities Fraud Suit
An Illinois pension fund on Friday sued American International Group Inc. and current and former executives in New York federal court, saying the insurer schemed to artificially inflate the value of its securities while concealing a risky portfolio that led to a 97 percent drop in AIG's stock price.
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May 21, 2013
Q&A With McKenna Long's David Brown
The pending rules regarding crowdfunding and the relaxation of the general solicitation prohibition in the JOBS Act may have the most day-to-day impact — eliminating a half-century old requirement on how and from whom companies can raise capital, says David Brown, head of McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP's corporate finance group.
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May 21, 2013
DOJ Slams S&P Bid To Toss Inflated RMBS Ratings Suit
The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday hit back at Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC’s bid to dismiss a suit over allegedly flawed residential mortgage-backed securities ratings issued before the financial crisis, telling a California federal judge it had properly alleged fraud by the ratings firm.
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May 21, 2013
Ex-Digital Domain CEO, Directors Hit With Investor Suit
Two investment funds on Friday sued the former CEO and several executives of Digital Domain Media Group in New York state court, accusing them of withholding key information about the company’s rocky financial position before its initial public offering in 2011 and subsequent bankruptcy last year.
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May 21, 2013
Jury Convicts Atty Over Stock Fraud Scheme With Ex-NFLer
A Florida jury on Monday convicted a California attorney of conspiring with former NFL player Willie Gault and others to artificially inflate a heart-monitoring device company's stock through a series of fraudulent schemes.
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May 21, 2013
Herbalife Taps PwC As Auditor After KPMG Insider Scandal
Herbalife Ltd. said Tuesday it had chosen PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as its auditor, replacing KPMG LLP after a partner at the firm was charged in early April with leaking confidential information about Herbalife and other clients to a friend who traded on the tips.
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May 21, 2013
WaMu Noteholders Can't Join $10B Fight, DC Circ. Says
The D.C. Circuit on Tuesday refused to let a group of Washington Mutual Bank noteholders enter Deutsche Bank AG's $10 billion suit over WaMu's poor-quality mortgages, ruling that their interest in the case was too conditional to justify intervening and that their inclusion could open the floodgates for other creditors.
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May 21, 2013
Dimon Survives, But Risk Concerns Loom For JPMorgan
JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon will keep his chairman’s seat after investors defeated an effort to split the roles Tuesday, but slim re-election margins for the bank’s risk committee will fuel calls for board reforms, experts say.
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May 21, 2013
Gupta Asks 2nd Circ. To Overturn Conviction
Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director Rajat Gupta asked the Second Circuit on Tuesday to overturn his conviction for providing insider information to hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam, arguing the jury should not have heard certain wiretaps.
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May 21, 2013
Chevron Sues Sunoco Over Texas Pipeline Deal
A unit of Chevron Corp. fired off a derivative lawsuit Monday in Delaware Chancery Court on behalf of West Texas Gulf Pipeline Co. and against a subsidiary of Sunoco Inc., alleging that Sunoco's representatives on WTG's board approved an unfair pipeline lease.
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May 21, 2013
GOP Sens. Hammer Lew On IRS Targeting Scandal
Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew on Tuesday said he will push regulators to speed up finishing capital, proprietary trading and other Dodd-Frank Act-mandated rules even as questions over the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups dominated his appearance before a Senate panel.
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May 21, 2013
Venable Shouldn't Shake $11M Facebook IPO Suit, ESG Says
ESG Capital Partners argued on Monday that a legal malpractice suit against Venable LLP should stick, alleging that the law firm helped a known con man defraud the investment manager of $11.2 million by falsely promising to secure ESG pre-IPO Facebook shares.
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May 21, 2013
Ex-SAC Trader Lashes Back At Feds In $276M Tipping Case
Former SAC Capital Advisors LLP portfolio manager Mathew Martoma told a New York federal court Monday that prosecutors were trying to “have it both ways” by insisting their $276 million insider trading case was focused on specific deals in July 2008, but also included allegations dating back to 2006.
Expert Analysis
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A Model For Facing Meritless Derivative Suits In Pa.
The decision by the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas in In re H.J. Heinz Co. Derivative and Class Action Litigation represents a faithful application of the American Law Institute’s Principles of Corporate Governance, which were formally adopted by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the landmark decision Cuker v. Mikalauskas, say attorneys with Dechert LLP.
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Sui Generis At Supreme Court
Not since Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 have we seen a Supreme Court so imbalanced that it would throw its own power away as it did in Twombly, Iqbal and Concepcion, or devalue its own authority through matters of little interest, simply for the benefit of large American corporations, says Fred Isquith of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP.
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A Significant Impact On Private Investment Funds
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., recently reintroduced the Inclusive Prosperity Act of 2013, a financial transaction tax that, according to its supporters, would provide the federal government between $150 billion and $340 billion of revenue per year. The bill is, essentially, a sales tax on large Wall Street banks — however, its provisions seem to impact hedge funds and private equity funds, says David Sussman of Duane Morris LLP.
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FTC And SEC Are Schizoid On Social Media
The Federal Trade Commission's recent guidance on digital advertising disclaimers and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's new policy on corporate financial disclosures were presented by the agencies as ways to enable use of social media by corporations — but instead just make things much harder, if not totally impracticable, says Glenn Manishin of Troutman Sanders LLP.
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An Economist's View Of Amgen
One consequence of the U.S. Supreme Court's Amgen opinion will be the courts placing greater scrutiny on the empirical results economists use to evaluate the fifth Cammer factor — cause and effect, says Michael Hartzmark of Hartzmark Economics Litigation Practice LLC.
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Clear Business Logic Can Foil Parallel Conduct Claims
For practitioners defending conspiracy claims, the Second Circuit's recent decision in Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. Citigroup Inc. may provide the basis to argue that conduct solidly grounded by legitimate business interests should be sufficient to fend off allegations of collusion, says Bruce Colbath of Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP.
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FRCP Changes Will Have Major Impact On 3rd-Party Discovery
The U.S. Supreme Court recently endorsed significant changes to Rule 45 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that will greatly simplify the third-party subpoena process, but the changes do not go as far as some would have liked in centralizing third-party discovery disputes to the court where the litigation is pending, say Mark Klapow and Ariel Applebaum-Bauch of Crowell & Moring LLP.
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Keeping Tabs On Employee Social Media Discourse
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent investigation on Netflix reminds employers that they may unwittingly violate the SEC’s full-disclosure requirements unless they take steps to guard against employees’ inadvertent disclosures of material, nonpublic information through social media channels, says Reema Kapur of Seyfarth Shaw LLP.
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How To Run Team Meetings In Complex Cases — Part 2
Remember that the structure of a meeting guides the team's conduct. There are three types of alternative meeting structures that can and should be utilized by the litigation team, says David Dolkas of McDermott Will & Emery LLP.
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Ralph Lauren: Inadequate Rewards For Exemplary Cooperation
Although the government will no doubt cite the recent Ralph Lauren Corp. nonprosecution agreements as an exemplar of the benefits of self-reporting and cooperation, we think they reaffirm the importance of careful consideration before a company decides to self-report potential unlawful conduct, say attorneys with Covington & Burling LLP.