Regulatory Enforcement

The Justice Department has given compliance executives some fresh Foreign Corrupt Practices Act settlements to chew over, on the chronic perils of inheriting FCPA problems via acquisition and of doing business in China. A June 13 Justice Department opinion gives companies a “new way forward” to help avoid inheriting FCPA liability through acquisitions when companies […]

If an African village chief demands a chicken for permission to conduct some local business transaction, is that considered a facilitating payment under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? The question may sound like a bit of FCPA-related humor—and OK, it really is pretty funny—but it also is a genuine example of the compliance questions global […]

Before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dura Pharmaceuticals vs. Broudo back in 2005, experts hoped it would offer the final word on defining “loss causation.” The decision instead seems to have given three final words: No such luck. The Dura ruling did raise the bar for plaintiffs in securities class-action lawsuits, by […]

Britain’s Financial Services Authority may soon have new power to offer immunity to corporate whistleblowers, a potent step intended to give regulators a stronger hand in policing against financial fraud. Under current British law, would-be whistleblowers remain vulnerable to prosecution for the very market abuses they want to report. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling […]

Two years ago, Federal District Court Judge Ancer Haggerty dismissed a series of criminal indictments against three executives at FLIR Systems, and granted motions to suppress statements the three made to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The judge also blasted the “egregious behavior of the government” in using a civil SEC probe as cover to […]

First came the long march to amend the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and bring them into line with the Internet age. Now comes the chore of herding all 50 states into the same age as well. The amended federal rules went into effect Dec. 1, 2006. The judiciary spent more than a year on […]

The last few months have been relatively quiet in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement, but don’t be fooled. All signs point to another banner year for the U.S. crackdown on foreign bribery and corruption. Enforcement of the statute, which bars domestic companies from bribing foreign officials, reached record highs during each of the last two […]

Qualcomm Corp. has started a fight with its own lawyers and IT consultants over one of the thorniest questions about legal discovery in the electronic age: Who’s responsible when a company fails to turn over electronically stored information? The dispute is unfolding in federal court in San Diego, Calif., where Qualcomm has been embroiled in […]

With activist hedge funds stirring up drama in boardrooms from the New York Times Co. to Motorola, we thought it timely to scan the just-released findings and recommendations of the Conference Board’s Working Group on Hedge Fund Activism. Full disclosure: We were co-chairs of the group. That being said, the fact remains that what hedge […]

Corporate executives and their counsel, take note: While soaring average and total settlement amounts in recent years have been making headlines—driven by a small number of extremely large cases—the latest data show that the largely ignored mid-range settlements are packing a pretty big punch as well. That’s according to the latest data on securities class […]