Bruce Carton

As I observed here a year ago, It is hard to make anything 100% pure. Ivory Soap famously falls just short at 99.44% pure. Even Breaking Bad’s Walter White could not get his blue-tinted methamphetamine purer than 99.1%. In FY 2014, however, the SEC maintained 100% perfection in its administrative proceedings. The agency reportedly prevailed in every single […]

After a verdict-free period that spanned three months, my SEC Trial Scorecard is finally back in action to report on yesterday’s verdict in the SEC’s case against former NFL wide receiver Willie Gault. This running SEC Trial Scorecard tracks the SEC’s trials and outcomes for FY 2015.    To date in FY 2015, which began on […]

This week, legislators in Utah passed a bill that will require the state to establish a new “Utah White Collar Crime Offender Registry.” The New York Times reports that the Registry, which is similar in concept to the sex offender registries now in every state in the U.S., will be “the nation’s first white-collar offender […]

When we last checked in on the Brazilian insider trading case against former billionaire Eike Batista, the case was, by all accounts, in “turmoil.” As I discussed here, the criminal prosecution against Batista — a landmark case that may make him the first person ever sent to prison in Brazil for insider trading — was […]

A hot topic on this blog of late has been the SEC’s recent focus on bringing cases as administrative proceedings, an in-house type of action in which the agency has enjoyed extraordinary success. A related, and just as hot, topic has been the efforts of numerous respondents in these APs (at least a half-dozen by Alison Frankel’s) to […]

As I wrote here last month, the Second Circuit’s decision in U.S. v. Newman has resulted in a flurry of recent pleas from people such as Mark Cuban, James Stewart and others for Congress to, finally, define the law of insider trading.    On Monday, Congressman Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) became the first member of […]

The SEC announced today that it issued a sizable whistleblower award to a former corporate officer. The SEC stated that while corporate officers and directors are typically not eligible under the Dodd-Frank whistleblower statute to receive awards, the statute carves out an exception if an officer reports information concerning misconduct to the SEC more than […]

Remember back in November 2010 when the FBI launched a series of raids on hedge funds including Level Global Investors LP and Diamondback Capital Management LLC? These raids ultimately led to the convictions of Level Global co-founder Anthony Chiasson and Diamondback Capital’s Todd Newman on criminal insider trading charges. Shortly thereafter, Level Global went out of […]

I’ve been following the interesting insider trading prosecution trial of former Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista that has been unfolding in Rio de Janeiro. Three years ago, Batista was worth $30 billion and was declared “the pride of Brazil” by Brazil’s President. After the October 2013 collapse of his oil company, Batista is now reportedly worth […]

Image: SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar is calling on the agency to create guidelines for when it will bring enforcement actions as administrative proceedings and when it will pursue cases in federal court. Given the SEC’s 100 percent success rate in administrative proceedings, he said in a speech, clarity on enforcement approaches is only fair.