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Securities
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May 21, 2013
Mayer Brown Snags Real Estate Finance Pro From Dechert
Mayer Brown LLP said Friday it had picked up a Dechert LLP attorney with expertise in real estate finance and securities law to boost its banking and finance practice in Charlotte, N.C.
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May 21, 2013
Investors Prevail Over Citigroup In ARS Market-Bust Arbitration
Citigroup Global Markets Inc. must pay $1 million in damages to two Texas companies that faulted the firm for failing to pull their money out of the auction rate securities market before its collapse, an arbitration panel ruled Friday.
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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.
Expert Analysis
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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.
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How To Run Team Meetings In Complex Cases — Part 1
Many litigation teams struggle with making good decisions and running effective team meetings for three reasons: compromised decision-making, lack of healthy meeting conflict, and lack of alternative meeting structures, says David Dolkas of McDermott Will & Emery LLP.
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SEC Tees Up Private Equity Enforcement Issues
Recent remarks by Bruce Karpati, chief of the Asset Management Unit of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as recent enforcement cases by the SEC, demonstrate an increased focus on the private equity sector — in particular, on aggressive fundraising disclosures, conflicts of interest and “zombie funds,” among other things, say Scott Naidech and Garrett Lynam of Chadbourne & Parke LLP.
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Forensic Analytics Can Find Needles In Multiple Haystacks
Forensic analytics is indispensable to any situation involving voluminous transactions or other large amounts of data. Yet, too few attorneys or organizations use, or maximize, forensic analytics to its fullest benefit. The recently publicized European soccer match-fixing scandal provides a handy illustration, say Jonny Frank and Alex Lefferts of StoneTurn Group LLP.
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Protect Your Company From FCPA Risks In Latin America
Latin America is an area of key concern for companies operating overseas and subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and has been for a number of years. The charges against four former employees of BizJet International Sales and Support Inc. are the latest reminder for companies to take steps to mitigate the corruption risk associated with doing business in the region, say attorneys with Fulbright & Jaworski LLP.
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New Directions For SEC's Insider Trading Program
What is striking about SEC v. Moore — an insider trading case against a Canadian investment banker who allegedly traded on nonpublic information that he "pieced together" — is that the facts allegedly observed by Moore, when viewed independently, are all seemingly immaterial. The mosaic theory, if not dead, may very well be on life support, say attorneys with Allen & Overy LLP.
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Del. Draws Line In The Sands Of Discovery
In resolving Morgans Hotel Group Co. Kalisman v. Friedman, the Delaware Court of Chancery carefully drew the line to allow discovery of communications between counsel and a special committee that the plaintiff-director was a member of, but shielded communications between counsel and a subcommittee on which the plaintiff-director did not serve, says Herbert Kozlov of Reed Smith LLP.
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An Outline Of SEC's Bold Enforcement Plan
Recent statements by newly confirmed U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairwoman Mary Jo White and other SEC officials suggest a strong enforcement effort in the coming years — and the Obama administration’s budget proposal for FY 2014 indicates that the commission likely will have the resources it needs to support this effort, say attorneys with Arnold & Porter LLP.
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Another Example Of The Benefits Of FCPA Self-Reporting
Ralph Lauren Corp.'s aggressive response to its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations led to nonprosecution agreements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice, which demonstrates a continued focus by the government on securing and rewarding cooperation, say Jonathan Green and James Athas of Kaye Scholer LLP.