Bruce Carton

Under a July 30 opinion by the UK’s highest court, an ancient legal maxim (“ex turpi causa non oritur actio”) may provide auditors in the UK with crucial protection against certain types of fraud cases. Auditing firms are big targets in investment fraud lawsuits. In a recent decision, however, the UK’s highest court dismissed a […]

Pointing to recent Congressional testimony by SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro on July 14th, a Madoff victim group called the BernardMadoffVictims.org says that it is now clear that SIPC is a “mere façade” and is underfunded because SIPC and the SEC failed to charge the securities industry a realistic price for SIPC insurance. In her testimony […]

I recently read about a development in the R. Allen Stanford case that hopefully can be fleshed out a bit by Enforcement Action readers. There were reports last week that some lucky person in the federal prosecutor’s office will now be taking on the responsibility for “re-assembl[ing] the contents of three bags of shredded documents” […]

I doubt many of the public companies that read Compliance Week have convicted securities fraud felons working as executive officers, but hey, if you do, the SEC has a special reminder for you: Make sure you disclose the identity and involvement of these felons in your public filings! On Thursday, the SEC filed a complaint […]

Today, Wayne State University law professor Peter Henning and I hashed through the various issues raised in “Hot Tips, Twitter and Insider Trading” in an online discussion. We also explored the recent Mark Cuban decision, the 2nd Circuit’s opinion yesterday in the Dorozhko case, and the bill now before Congress that would prohibit Congressional insider […]

The SEC has asked a federal court in Arizona to order the former CEO of CSK Auto Corporation to reimburse the company and its shareholders more than $4 million. The SEC alleges that the CEO, Maynard L. Jenkins, received the money in bonuses and stock sale profits while CSK was committing accounting fraud. According to […]

A few weeks ago I offered the following hypothetical and questions: An executive at publicly-traded ABC Corp. learns that his company is about to be acquired at a significant premium to its current stock price. He goes on Twitter and posts the following: “I’m about to become a rich man. My company, ABC Corp., will […]

The Deutsche Bank spying scandal continues to heat up in Germany, as the bank has now reportedly dismissed two top executives following an internal investigation. As previously discussed here, in a development somewhat reminiscent of the Hewlett Packard spying scandal from 2006, the German press reported earlier this month that Deutsche Bank spied on certain […]