Regulatory Enforcement

Compliance professionals play many roles—adviser, educator, and auditor, to name a few. Now, recent, well-publicized potential lapses in compliance have highlighted another role: prognosticator. DETAILS Long Brady Long was named chief compliance officer of Pride International, a worldwide drilling contractor with revenues of $2.5 billion, in June 2006. In January 2007, he was also named […]

The ghost of insider trading investigations may be haunting the corporate landscape again these days, but judicious use of a “Rule 10b5-1 plan” to sell stock can still provide solid protection for executives who want to avoid the specter of a visit from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The chief of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, […]

In one of the first whistleblower suits under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to reach court, a federal judge in New York has raised some eyebrows by allowing the plaintiff to proceed to trial—and striking some potentially ominous tones for corporate defendants. Whistleblower lawsuits are still largely an unexplored part of Sarbanes-Oxley. The law clearly allows protections […]

A Florida appellate court has thrown out a jury award of nearly $1.6 billion—including $850 million in punitive damages—to billionaire Ronald Perelman in his lawsuit blaming investment bank Morgan Stanley for financial losses he incurred after receiving stock that later proved worthless in the sale of a camping-equipment company. The trial judge had earlier whacked […]

The liability of so-called “secondary actors”—the investment banks, vendors, and others who might help a company commit securities fraud—is taking center stage in the courtroom these days. Though Compliance Week has covered this issue extensively over the past few years (see box below, right), the topic has again risen to the forefront in recent weeks, […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission raised a few eyebrows recently when it filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt an extremely tough standard that plaintiffs would have to meet when they try to sue public companies for fraud. Although some lawyers defend the SEC’s decision to file the brief, others question […]

2006 marked a banner year for enforcement actions and prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—and experts say 2007 could be busier yet. The number of enforcement actions under the FCPA—a statute that, among other things, makes it illegal to bribe foreign officials to obtain or keep business—skyrocketed last year, with the Justice Department and […]

Sealed is the fate of Comverse Technology’s former general counsel, William Sorin, for his role in that company’s backdated stock options. An uncertain future, however, still potentially awaits many more GCs caught up in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s web of backdating investigations. Sorin, 57, the first attorney to plead guilty over allegations that he […]