Regulatory Enforcement

The unlucky companies on the hot seat for possible fraud during the sub-prime mortgage crisis are likely to have plenty of company in the months to come. While it’s anyone’s guess exactly where the federal investigations underway at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Lehman Brothers, and other firms will lead, observers say many more companies […]

You know you can count on Enforcement Action to keep a watchful eye out for SEC-related trends, so here’s the latest micro-trend I’m seeing: the major news networks take the latest twist in the financial crisis and make a video about it asking, “Where Was the SEC?” The first example of this came a few […]

Each year in the last couple weeks of September, the flow of SEC Litigation Releases announcing new cases filed by the Enforcement Division seems to turn from a slow but steady drip to a firehose blast. This year has been no exception, as the chart above indicates. By my quick count, after averaging just under […]

I was just reading Richard Meyer’s interesting article on Compliance Week (here) about “CSOX,” China’s version of governance and financial reporting akin to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States, which Chinese authorities would like to have in place by the middle of next summer. “CSOX”? People, please! I demand that the short name for […]

Corporate lawyers have high hopes for a new federal rule that provides certainty around attorney-client privilege and work product protection waiver issues. In addition to standardizing federal law in this area, many observers say the new rule could help some companies cut the soaring cost of electronic discovery. Experts, including David Cohen, co-chair of the […]

Unprecedented government-led bailouts of cornerstone financial institutions serve as an indicator that the tidal wave of litigation over failed sub-prime mortgages has hardly even begun. LaCroix “If sub-prime litigation is a nine-inning ball game, we’re only in the top of the second inning,” says Kevin LaCroix, an attorney and partner in management liability insurer OakBridge […]

On Tuesday, the SEC brought an enforcement action against James D. Zeglis and Gautum Gupta, Lance D. McKee and Jim W. Dixon alleging insider trading in the securities of Georgia-Pacific Corporation. The SEC alleged that Zeglis obtained material nonpublic information from his brother, a member of Georgia-Pacific’s board of directors, and tipped Gupta and Dixon […]

Details of the Justice Department’s new “Filip Memo”—replacing the previous McNulty Memo, spelling out how companies’ cooperation in regulatory probes affects possible corporate indictments—are finally available. The early verdict: a much-needed step in the right direction, which still doesn’t address the underlying challenges faced by companies trying to avoid prosecution. Filip Deputy Attorney General Mark […]

In today’s inflationary market, getting competitive bids from suppliers is more important than ever. But competitive bidding doesn’t do you much good if the process is compromised. Snyder singled out bid allocation as an especially lucrative fraud, if done correctly. “Everybody gets a piece of the action, and as a result of that, knowing there’s […]