Bruce Carton

Speaking before an audience of corporate directors and senior executives at the annual Stanford Directors’ College on Monday, SEC Chair Mary Jo White offered remarks on three key topics: (1) the role of directors as “gatekeepers” for shareholders; (2) self-reporting and cooperating in SEC investigations; and (3) the relationship between the SEC’s whistleblower program and a company’s […]

In April 2014, the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations issued a Risk Alert regarding its initiative to assess cybersecurity preparedness in the securities industry and noted that it would soon begin to conduct cybersecurity examinations of more than 50 registered broker-dealers and registered investment advisers. A CNBC report today on an extraordinary cyber attack last year against a […]

Yesterday, former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta began serving his two-year prison sentence for insider trading. After being convicted for providing Galleon founder Raj Rajaratnam with confidential information about Goldman Sachs, Gupta and Rajaratnam will now serve time at the same correctional facility: Federal Medical Center-Devens, located in Ayer, Massachusetts. Rajaratnam is serving a much longer, 11-year prison […]

On Wednesday, SEC Director of Enforcement Andrew Ceresney stated during a D.C. Bar luncheon program on SEC enforcement developments and priorities that although it has historically been rare for the SEC to file insider trading cases as administrative proceedings, “I think there will be more going forward.”  The SEC has suffered a number of losses in federal court trials […]

Yesterday, my work day was derailed by hackers seeking ransom.  I rely heavily on a service called Feedly, a news aggregator and RSS feed reader, to help me wade through hundreds of news sources and key word searches each day related to securities enforcement and litigation. Yesterday, however, the Feedly website was down and unusable. On […]

In March, I began tracking here the SEC’s trials to date in FY 2014 (which began on October 1, 2013), and the results in each case. On Friday, June 6, 2014, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California returned a verdict against the SEC in what I believe to be the […]

This month the Securities and Exchange Commission got a strong endorsement of its ability to independently reach settlements with corporate defendants. After sitting on the case for two-and-a-half years, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit finally issued an opinion in favor of the SEC on its high-profile appeal involving a proposed settlement […]

This month the Securities and Exchange Commission got a strong endorsement of its ability to independently reach settlements with defendants in its enforcement actions. After sitting on the case for two-and-a-half years, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit finally issued an opinion in favor of the SEC in its high-profile appeal involving […]

Last week, I moderated a very interesting webcast that hit on a host of cybersecurity issues, and discussed the fact that when your company is the victim of a data breach, there is no “911” for you to call to get help. Rather, the panelists explained, the company itself has to lead the response with […]