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Securities
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January 28, 2025
Ex-SEC Enforcement Chief Says Staff Faced Uptick In Threats
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recently departed enforcement chief said Tuesday he wishes he could have done more to insulate his staff from the uptick in threats they received while he headed the program, and he urged his successor to do what they could to protect the agency's attorneys.
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January 28, 2025
Texas Judge OKs $40M Settlement In Six Flags Expansion Suit
A Texas federal judge indicated Tuesday that he would approve a $40 million class settlement between Six Flags Entertainment Corp. and investors accusing the amusement park operator of bungling expansion plans in China — after having previously dismissed the case twice.
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January 28, 2025
Founder Can't Explain Hedge Fund's Filing Mismatch To Jury
A hedge fund founder told a Denver jury Tuesday that he doesn't know why some of the fund's regulatory filings don't identify it as a director for a Colorado biopharmaceutical company, in a suit brought by stockholders who claim the fund must return $11 million earned from short-swing trades.
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January 28, 2025
Citron Research Founder Slams DOJ's Fraud Suit
Citron Research's founder urged a California federal judge to throw out the federal government's securities fraud case alleging he published unfavorable reports about companies to manipulate stock prices, arguing Monday he never published false information about any public company, and prosecutors fail to allege he intended to defraud his audience.
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January 28, 2025
Chancery Nixes TRO in Jenzabar Stock Buyback Dispute
Investors in an educational software venture mired in Delaware Court of Chancery litigation dating to 2009 lost an 11th-hour effort to broaden the latest case on Tuesday, with a vice chancellor noting that the state Supreme Court is set to take up an appeal in the already decided action on Wednesday.
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January 28, 2025
DC Judge Doubts Lawfulness Of USCIS EB-5 Guidance
A D.C. federal judge expressed deep skepticism Tuesday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services acted lawfully when the agency shortened the minimum investment period for foreign investors seeking green cards, outlining plans to toss the rule or pause a lawsuit challenging it pending rulemaking.
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January 28, 2025
Dolce & Gabbana Wants 'Worthless' NFT Outfit Suit Tossed
The U.S. division of Italian luxury fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana has urged a New York federal judge to toss a proposed investor class action accusing it of abandoning a nonfungible tokens project while retaining the more than $25 million that was used to fund it, arguing that the U.S. arm of the company was not at all involved in the project.
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January 28, 2025
SEC Wells Meetings Likely Back On The Table, Official Says
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's acting deputy director of enforcement said Tuesday that leadership was open to meeting more frequently with those facing SEC investigations and hinted at the possibility that it would pursue fewer industry bars against those who violate the securities laws.
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January 28, 2025
Silk Road Pardon Sparks Hope For More Crypto Clemency
President Donald Trump's decision to free the convicted Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht brought praise from crypto advocates and spurred some to seek the ear of the new administration in hopes that the president will pardon other alleged crypto criminals, too.
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January 28, 2025
Amid Big Bets, Tom Goldstein Argued 'Poker Is Not Gambling'
A federal indictment's jarring portrayal of pioneering U.S. Supreme Court advocate Tom Goldstein as an "ultrahigh-stakes" gambler who dodged taxes has left the legal community virtually speechless. But Goldstein's status as a serious poker player was not a secret, and in past court cases, he proclaimed the card game "fundamentally dissimilar" from conventional gambling, even while preparing to wager millions on matches.
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January 28, 2025
Hand Sanitizer Co. Ex-Exec Inks $1M ESOP Deal
A former hand sanitizer company executive has agreed to pay $1 million to resolve claims from workers that he violated federal benefits law by helping organize a $398 million purchase of overvalued company stock by their employee stock ownership plan, according to filings in Illinois federal court.
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January 28, 2025
Chancery Bars More Disclosures In Sage-Biogen Fight
A Delaware vice chancellor on Tuesday prohibited Biogen Inc. and its human therapeutics product subsidiary from making public statements regarding a potential buyout of Sage Therapeutics Inc. after Sage sued for enforcement of a standstill provision in an earlier Biogen deal for Sage stock.
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January 28, 2025
Holland & Knight Adds Financial Services Partner In New York
Holland & Knight LLP has brought on a former Mayer Brown LLP partner who specializes in asset securitization and structured finance to its growing financial services team.
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January 28, 2025
Wealth Manager Cops To Funding Lifestyle With Client Money
A suburban Philadelphia investment adviser pled guilty in federal court Tuesday morning to charges that he stole more than $20 million of his clients' money, which he spent on international travel, country club dues, and a stake in a New Jersey mini golf course.
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January 27, 2025
Pilgrim's Pride, Investors Ink $41.5M Price-Fixing Deal
Investors in Pilgrim's Pride asked a Colorado federal judge Friday to greenlight a settlement with the meat company and its former CEO, who have agreed to pay $41.5 million to resolve long-running claims over misrepresentations and price-fixing in the broiler chicken market that led to artificially inflated stock prices.
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January 27, 2025
Virtu, Insiders Sued In Del. Over Stock Buybacks
Stockholders of Virtu Inc. have sued the global financial services venture's top brass in Delaware's Court of Chancery, alleging they diverted roughly $400 million from public stockholders through share repurchases that took advantage of the company's two-tiered corporate structure.
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January 27, 2025
Lummis Tells 2nd Circ. SEC 'Flouts' Congress In Crypto Cases
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R.-Wyo., told the Second Circuit that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's ongoing suit against Coinbase Inc. has complicated congressional efforts to set rules for digital assets, filing her support for the crypto exchange's bid for a quick ruling from the appeals court on how securities laws apply to the transactions on its platform.
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January 27, 2025
Palo Alto Networks Inside-Trader Wins Resentencing At 9th Circ.
The Ninth Circuit on Monday upheld securities fraud convictions of a former Palo Alto Networks engineer for raking in $7 million by trading on stolen inside information but remanded the case for resentencing, saying a lower court was wrong to use his trading gains to estimate the cybersecurity company's loss.
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January 27, 2025
Crypto Exchange KuCoin Pleads Out, Agrees To Pay $297M
Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin on Monday pled guilty and agreed to pay $297 million for failing to implement anti-money laundering protocols and allowing more than $5 billion worth of criminal funds to flow through its trading platform.
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January 27, 2025
Fund Tells Jury No Need To Return $11M Short-Swing Profits
A hedge fund told a Denver federal jury Monday that the $11 million it earned from the short-swing sales of a biopharmaceutical company's stock doesn't need to be returned because the transactions fall under an exception to securities law on insider trading.
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January 27, 2025
Advertising Platform's Changes Hurt Investors, Suit Says
Advertising platform Cardlytics Inc. faces a proposed class action alleging that it failed to warn shareholders that fast-paced changes to its technology could impact its ability to deliver on advertiser budgets, hurting investors when it disclosed an associated earnings miss.
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January 27, 2025
Civil Liberties Org. Says FDIC's Court 'Eviscerates' Civil Rights
The New Civil Liberties Alliance told the Fifth Circuit on Monday to spurn the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s attempt to level a fraud judgment against a banker, saying the agency's in-house court sidesteps the constitutional right to a jury trial.
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January 27, 2025
2 Firms Want To Co-Lead Humacyte Investor Suit
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and Pomerantz LLP have asked to co-lead a proposed class of Humacyte Inc. investors alleging that the company failed to disclose quality assurance issues at its manufacturing facilities, which delayed regulatory review for its bioengineered blood vessel product candidate.
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January 27, 2025
Chancery Orders Tech Co. Trust Dissolved, Sanctions Trustee
Citing a trustee's repeated, improper attempts to transfer interests now held in a statutory trust formed to hold an Idaho tech company's shares, a Delaware vice chancellor on Monday ordered the trust dissolved and the trustee barred from managing any other trust or entity holding the company's stock.
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January 27, 2025
Yen Libor-Rigging Case Lands Before 2nd Circ. Again
Institutional investors urge the Second Circuit to again revive a lawsuit accusing Bank of America, UBS and others of rigging the interbank borrowing rate for Japanese yen, arguing in a brief Monday that a lower court judge dismissed the case on "obviously erroneous grounds with little (if any) supporting analysis."
Expert Analysis
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Opinion
Justices Rightly Corrected Course In Nvidia And Facebook
By dismissing both the Nvidia and Facebook class actions, over investors' ability to hold corporations accountable for fraud, the U.S. Supreme Court was right in refusing to favor corporations over transparency, and reaffirmed its commitment to corporate accountability, investor protection and the rule of law, says Laura Posner at Cohen Milstein.
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Gov't Scrutiny Of Workplace Chat Apps Set To Keep Growing
The incoming Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress are poised to open numerous investigations that include increasing demands for entities to produce communications from workplace chat apps, so companies must evaluate their usage and retention policies, say attorneys at Orrick.
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Del. Dispatch: The 2024 Corporate Cases You Need To Know
The Delaware Court of Chancery in 2024 issued several decisions that some viewed as upending long-standing corporate practices, leading to the amendment of the Delaware General Corporation Law and debates at some Delaware corporations about potentially reincorporating to another state, say attorneys at Fried Frank.
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Top 10 Whistleblowing And Retaliation Events Of 2024
From a Florida federal court’s ruling that the False Claims Act’s qui tam provision is unconstitutional to a record-breaking number of whistleblower tips filed with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, employers saw significant developments in the federal and state whistleblower landscapes this year, say attorneys at Proskauer.
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When US Privilege Law Applies To Docs Made Outside The US
As globalization manifests itself in disputes over foreign-created documents, a California federal court’s recent trademark decision illustrates nuances of both U.S. privilege frameworks and foreign evidentiary protections that attorneys must increasingly bear in mind, say attorneys at Hunton.
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Changes To Expect From SEC Under Trump Nominee
President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Paul Atkins for U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chair will likely lead to significant shifts in the Division of Enforcement's priorities, likely focused on protecting retail investors and the stability of the capital markets, say attorneys at Morrison Foerster.
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Executive Orders That Could Affect Financial Services In 2025
The incoming Trump administration is likely to quickly revive or update a number of prior executive orders, and possibly issue new ones, that could affect financial services by emphasizing market discipline rather than regulatory initiatives to drive change in the industry, say attorneys at Davis Wright.
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'Minimal Participant' Bar Is Tough To Clear For Whistleblowers
Under the U.S. Department of Justice’s corporate whistleblower pilot program, would-be whistleblowers will find it tough to show that they only minimally participated in criminal misconduct while still providing material information, but sentencing precedent shows how they might prove their eligibility for an award, say attorneys at MoloLamken.
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2024 IPO Market Trends, And What To Expect Next Year
The initial public offering market returned to historically typical levels on a deal count basis in 2024 but continued to lag based on proceeds raised due to a larger number of smaller IPOs this year, and signs point to continued ongoing momentum in the next year, say attorneys at Paul Hastings.
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Impact Of Corporate Transparency Act Ambiguity On Banks
Even though banks generally needn't file beneficial ownership information reports, financial institutions must continue to monitor the status of the Corporate Transparency Act and understand its requirements in case the nationwide injunction that was issued against the CTA earlier this month is overturned, say attorneys at Armstrong Teasdale.
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A Look At SEC, CFTC's Record Year For Whistleblower Awards
Another banner year shows that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission have developed the gold standard for whistleblower award programs, but a CFTC funding crisis threatens to derail that program's success, say Andrew Feller and Geoff Schweller at Kohn Kohn.
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What 2024 Trends In Marketing, Comms Hiring Mean For 2025
The state of hiring in legal industry marketing, business development and communications over the past 12 months was marked by a number of trends — from changes in the C-suite to lateral move challenges — providing clues for what’s to come in the year ahead, says Ben Curle at Ambition.
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Expect Continuity In 2025 Anti-Money Laundering Policy
The past year has seen a range of anti-money laundering actions from federal financial regulators, and notwithstanding the imminent change from the Biden administration to the Trump administration, continuity may be more prevalent than change in the AML compliance space in 2025, say attorneys at White & Case.
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5 Notable Anti-Money Laundering Actions From 2024
Regulators' renewed interest in anti-money laundering programs in 2024 led to numerous enforcement actions and individual prosecutions in industries like banking, cryptocurrency and gaming, including the blockbuster TD Bank settlement and investigations of casinos in Nevada, says Michael Beckwith at Dickinson Wright.
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Alpine Ruling Previews Challenges To FINRA Authority
While the D.C. Circuit's holding that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority can't expel member firm Alpine prior to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission review was relatively narrow, it foreshadows possibly broader constitutional challenges to FINRA's enforcement and other nongovernmental disciplinary programs, say attorneys at Stradley Ronon.