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Capital Markets
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December 02, 2024
SEC Taps Former Crypto Chief To Head Litigation Efforts
The former acting chief of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission unit in charge of overseeing cybersecurity and cryptocurrency-related cases has been promoted to chief litigation counsel, expanding his oversight authority even as a more crypto-friendly administration is slated to enter the Oval Office in January.
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December 02, 2024
Top Promoter Of $58M IcomTech Crypto Ponzi Gets 10 Years
A Manhattan federal judge hit a Florida cryptocurrency salesman on Monday with a 10-year prison sentence for his role in promoting the $58 million IcomTech Ponzi scheme, saying he victimized others in a "get rich quick" scam and may do so again.
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December 02, 2024
Citi Splits Off Mexican Retail Bank Ahead Of Planned IPO
Citigroup said Monday it has completed the expected spinoff of its Mexican retail banking unit called Banamex — part of a strategy to separate its retail and institutional banking businesses in Mexico — paving the way for an initial public offering of Banamex.
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December 02, 2024
JPMorgan, Tesla Agree To End $162M Suit Over Musk Tweet
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Tesla told a New York federal judge on Monday the parties have agreed to voluntarily end JPMorgan's suit alleging Tesla owes it $162 million over expired stock warrants after Tesla CEO Elon Musk mulled taking the company private in an August 2018 tweet.
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December 02, 2024
Chancery OKs $345M Fee Award For $55B Musk Pay Fight
Delaware's chancellor approved a $345 million attorney fee award Monday in the case that scuttled Tesla CEO Elon Musk's 10-year, $55.6 billion compensation plan, rejecting the plaintiff's bid for $5.6 billion in freely tradable company shares and declining to reinstate Musk's proposed pay.
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December 02, 2024
Freshfields Lands Onetime SEC Acting Enforcement Head
Freshfields has added a litigation partner in its Washington, D.C., office who brings with her nearly 17 years of government experience including time as acting director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division, according to a Monday announcement.
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December 02, 2024
PE Firms Swap Calisen Stake At Reported $5B Value
A majority stake in Calisen Group is changing hands in a private equity-backed deal that is said to value the British smart metering company at more than $5 billion, according to disclosures made Monday.
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December 02, 2024
3 Firms Guide UAE Food Delivery App's Landmark $2B IPO
Shares in Talabat, a food delivery app based in the United Arab Emirates, are set to begin trading next week following a $2 billion initial public offering that marked the largest global technology IPO this year, under guidance from three law firms.
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December 02, 2024
Bochner Litigator Jumps To Gordon Rees In Bay Area
Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani LLP is deepening its California bench, bringing in a Bochner PLLC litigation and transactional attorney as a partner in its San Francisco Bay Area offices.
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November 27, 2024
Special Master In Citgo Sale Suit Goes Back To Drawing Board
The special master overseeing the sale of Citgo's parent company in a proceeding aimed at satisfying billions of dollars in Venezuelan debt has agreed to abandon his proposed sales plan after it became clear how little support it had garnered from creditors, he told a Delaware judge on Tuesday.
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November 27, 2024
Elon Musk Targets CFPB With Call To 'Delete' Agency
Billionaire Elon Musk has called for abolishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, writing on his social media platform X — formerly known as Twitter — that the government should "Delete CFPB" and "there are too many duplicative regulatory agencies."
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November 27, 2024
GOP-Led States Accuse BlackRock Of Driving Up Coal Prices
Texas is leading a coalition of nearly a dozen Republican-led states suing BlackRock Inc. and two other large asset managers for allegedly running an "investment cartel" that takes advantage of their large holdings in publicly traded energy companies to drive up coal prices, a claim that BlackRock has said is "baseless and defies common sense."
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November 27, 2024
Ga. CPA Must Pay SEC $850K For Ponzi Scheme Role
An Atlanta certified public accountant accused of serving as a front man for a convicted former Oppenheimer & Co. adviser's $110 million Ponzi scheme was hit with a money judgment of more than $854,000 by a Georgia federal judge.
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November 27, 2024
SEC Exempts More Debt Securities From New Trading Rules
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is relieving broker-dealers who quote unlisted stocks from increased information-gathering requirements that would have also applied to many fixed-income securities, a development attorneys say will prove welcome for debt issuers.
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November 27, 2024
Davis Polk, Cleary Drive Chinese Robotaxi Firm's Upsized IPO
Chinese robotaxi operator Pony AI Inc. priced an upsized $260 million initial public offering Wednesday, represented by Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and underwriters' counsel Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, raising money that the self-driving startup hopes will turbocharge growth.
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November 26, 2024
Warner Bros. Hit With Investor Suit Over Failed NBA Deal
Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. investors Monday filed a proposed class action claiming that the entertainment company and its top brass made false and misleading statements about how negotiations with the NBA were really going and the state of its overall business and financial prospects.
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November 26, 2024
2nd Circ. Nixes VR Capital Venezuela Fraud Suit
The Second Circuit has refused to revive VR Capital's lawsuit accusing Venezuela's state-owned oil company of fraud in connection with its issuance of some $2 billion in since-defaulted bonds, ruling Tuesday that the asset manager hadn't adequately pled its case.
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November 26, 2024
Wells Fargo Dodges 2nd Circ. Rehearing In $500M Plunge Suit
The Second Circuit has rejected a rehearing bid by two investors seeking to revive their proposed class action accusing Wells Fargo Securities LLC of causing a Chicago fund manager lose at least $500 million by wrongfully forcing the liquidation of its mutual fund and other investments.
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November 26, 2024
Crypto Miner Can't Get Quick Appeal In SEC Fraud Suit
A Utah man accused of defrauding crypto mining investors out of $18 million must face the claims that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought against him after a lower court judge on Tuesday declined his request to send the case to the Tenth Circuit.
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November 26, 2024
Oracle Says Crypto Co. Is Flouting 2020 Settlement Of TM Suit
Oracle Corp. claimed in a trademark infringement lawsuit filed in California federal court that cryptocurrency consulting company Crypto Oracle has resumed using the "Crypto Oracle" name four years after it agreed to stop using the "Oracle" marks in an earlier suit from Oracle Corp.
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November 26, 2024
Autodesk Wants Out Of Investor Suit Over Internal Controls
Autodesk Inc. asked a California federal judge on Tuesday to toss a proposed class action alleging the software company's stock price dropped after investors learned it lacked proper internal controls due to issues with its free cash flow and operating margin practices, saying its business plan statements at issue were "forward-looking" and accompanied by "cautionary" language.
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November 26, 2024
California's Top Bank, Fintech Regulator To Exit At Year's End
The top banking and fintech regulator for California is departing from the state's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation in a little more than a month, an agency spokesperson told Law360 on Tuesday.
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November 26, 2024
Ropes & Gray Atty Is Kirkland's Latest Debt Finance Hire
Kirkland & Ellis LLP announced the latest of several recent additions to its debt finance group on Monday, a Ropes & Gray LLP partner with a host of multibillion-dollar deals under his belt.
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November 26, 2024
DraftKings Wants Damages In NFLPA's Licensing Suit Axed
DraftKings Inc. wants partially tossed a suit launched by the NFL Players Association alleging the sports betting giant failed to make good on a licensing agreement related to nonfungible tokens, saying that the players are not entitled to any damages but that as a threshold matter, the maximum potential damages should be capped.
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November 25, 2024
SEC Secured Historic $8.2B Enforcement Haul In 2024
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission obtained $8.2 billion in civil penalties and disgorgement via successful enforcement actions in 2024, the highest amount in the history of the agency despite a significant decline in total enforcement actions, the SEC has announced.
Expert Analysis
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Equity Rights Offering Considerations As Maturity Cliff Looms
Current market uncertainties make an equity rights offering — involving affiliate backstop investors — a cost-effective, capital-raising transaction for distressed companies looking to manage their leverage ahead of the impending maturity of a substantial number of COVID-era debt issuances, say attorneys at Winston & Strawn.
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A Midyear Forecast: Tailwinds Expected For Atty Hourly Rates
Hourly rates for partners, associates and support staff continued to rise in the first half of this year, and this growth shows no signs of slowing for the rest of 2024 and into next year, driven in part by the return of mergers and acquisitions and the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence, says Chuck Chandler at Valeo Partners.
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Opinion
Discount Window Reform Needed To Curb Modern Bank Runs
We learned during the spring 2023 failures that bank runs can happen extraordinarily fast in light of modern technology, especially when banks have a greater concentration of large deposits, demonstrating that the antiquated but effective discount window needs to be overhauled before the next crisis, says Cris Cicala at Stinson.
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Series
After Chevron: Creating New Hurdles For ESG Rulemaking
The U.S. Supreme Court's Loper Bright decision, limiting court deference to agencies' statutory interpretations, could have significant impacts on the future of ESG regulation, creating new hurdles for agency rulemaking around these emerging issues, and calling into question current administrative actions, says Leah Malone at Simpson Thacher.
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Opinion
States Should Loosen Law Firm Ownership Restrictions
Despite growing buzz, normalized nonlawyer ownership of law firms is a distant prospect, so the legal community should focus first on liberalizing state restrictions on attorney and firm purchases of practices, which would bolster succession planning and improve access to justice, says Michael Di Gennaro at The Law Practice Exchange.
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Best Text Practices In Light Of Terraform's $4.5B Fraud Deal
Text messages were extremely important in a recent civil trial against Terraform Labs, leading to a $4.5 billion settlement, so litigants in securities fraud cases need to have robust mobile data policies that address the content and retention of messages, and the obligations of employees to allow for collection, say Josh Sohn and Alicia Clausen at Crowell & Moring.
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Series
Solving Puzzles Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Tackling daily puzzles — like Wordle, KenKen and Connections — has bolstered my intellectual property litigation practice by helping me to exercise different mental skills, acknowledge minor but important details, and build and reinforce good habits, says Roy Wepner at Kaplan Breyer.
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Dapper Settlement Offers Rules Of The Road For NFT Issuers
The terms of a $4 million settlement in a class action alleging that Dapper Labs sold its NBA Top Shot Moments as unregistered securities may be a model for third parties that wish to avoid securities liability in connection with offering digital asset non-fungible token collectibles, say attorneys at K&L Gates.
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Texas Ethics Opinion Flags Hazards Of Unauthorized Practice
The Texas Professional Ethics Committee's recently issued proposed opinion finding that in-house counsel providing legal services to the company's clients constitutes the unauthorized practice of law is a valuable clarification given that a UPL violation — a misdemeanor in most states — carries high stakes, say Hilary Gerzhoy and Julienne Pasichow at HWG.
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In Memoriam: The Modern Administrative State
On June 28, the modern administrative state, where courts deferred to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes, died when the U.S. Supreme Court overruled its previous decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council — but it is survived by many cases decided under the Chevron framework, say Joseph Schaeffer and Jessica Deyoe at Babst Calland.
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First-Of-Its-Kind Chancery Ruling Will Aid SPAC Defendants
The Delaware Chancery Court's first full dismissal of claims challenging a special purpose acquisition company transaction under the entire fairness doctrine in the recent Hennessy Capital Acquisition Stockholder Litigation establishes useful precedent to abate the flood of SPAC litigation, say Lisa Bugni and Benjamin Lee at King & Spalding.
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How To Clean Up Your Generative AI-Produced Legal Drafts
As law firms increasingly rely on generative artificial intelligence tools to produce legal text, attorneys should be on guard for the overuse of cohesive devices in initial drafts, and consider a few editing pointers to clean up AI’s repetitive and choppy outputs, says Ivy Grey at WordRake.
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Supreme Court's ALJ Ruling Carries Implications Beyond SEC
In its recent Jarkesy opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the types of cases that can be tried before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's in-house administrative law judges, setting the stage for challenges to the constitutionality of ALJs across other agencies, say Robert Robertson and Kimberley Church at Dechert.
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2nd Circ. ERISA Ruling May Help Fight Unfair Arb. Clauses
The Second Circuit recently held that a plaintiff seeking planwide relief under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act cannot be compelled to individual arbitration, a decision that opens the door to new applications of the effective vindication doctrine to defeat onerous and one-sided arbitration clauses, say Raphael Janove and Liana Vitale at Janove.
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Series
Boxing Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Boxing has influenced my legal work by enabling me to confidently hone the skills I've learned from the sport, like the ability to remain calm under pressure, evaluate an opponent's weaknesses and recognize when to seize an important opportunity, says Kirsten Soto at Clyde & Co.