Regulatory Enforcement

The United States blazed the trail against bribery of overseas officials when it enacted the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act 30 years ago. Other nations, however, are taking some very different routes to achieve the same goal. The FCPA is the world’s oldest statute aimed at combating bribery of public officials in another nation. Since the […]

T he Securities and Exchange Commission has again reassured smaller companies that they don’t need to do the same amount of work as their larger counterparts to assess and report on their internal controls under the SEC’s proposed management guidance for Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In remarks earlier this month at the SEC […]

The Delaware Chancery Court issued two rulings earlier this month that suggest the nation’s most influential tribunal on corporate law is going to be tough on companies embroiled in litigation over stock option backdating. The two cases, one against chip manufacturer Maxim Integrated Products and the other involving Tyson Foods, rejected the argument that companies […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission will convene a roundtable meeting in two weeks to gather input on the current state of filing financial statements using International Financial Reporting Standards, as the Commission slogs ahead with plans to harmonize IFRS and U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles by the end of the decade. The meeting, to be […]

Good news for companies footing the bill for liability coverage for corporate officers and directors: Thanks primarily to excess capacity in the insurance market, companies should be able to get more D&O coverage for less money. Driven by increasing capacity in the insurance market as a whole and by decreasing frequency and severity of losses […]

Keeping its promise to crack down on improperly dated grants of stock options, the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed new backdating charges against former executives of a defense contractor, even as rumors swirled that the Commission is closed to generating some sort of formula to determine penalties for companies caught in such cases. The […]

Excellent client update providing an overview of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement activities in 2006.

A proposed new rule of evidence for federal courts that was intended to limit disclosure of privileged corporate information may be more of a mixed bag than originally anticipated. Rule 502 would for the first time expressly provide that information disclosed to a government agency does not lose its privileged nature and could not be […]

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case later this spring that should clear up the confusion that has developed over what securities-fraud plaintiffs must show to satisfy the heightened pleading standard established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. McGuinness Appellate courts around the country currently use at least four […]

An influential federal appeals court has given corporate defendants new ammunition to help defeat class certification in securities lawsuits. The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month overturned class certification in the largest consolidated securities class action in U.S. history, directing the trial judge to view more skeptically claims that a purported […]