Regulatory Enforcement

When federal regulators recently concluded that home mortgage giant Fannie Mae had executed a $10.6 billion accounting fraud, regulators at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight vowed to seek forfeiture of any fraudulent gains from the Fannie Mae executives who concocted the scheme. Don’t count on them wresting money away from Fannie executives using […]

Some recent court cases may be indicators that the tide is turning back in favor of the once-common practice of advancing legal fees to employees entangled in government investigations, which had appeared to be under fire by federal prosecutors in recent years. With the decisions, legal experts say, U.S. courts appear to be taking a […]

It can be lonely at the top for corporate executives—figuratively and, when the C-suite comes under investigation, legally. Although executives may be inclined to view the general counsel as their ally, attorneys inside and outside the corporation represent only the company, not individual executives. The point may seem obvious to some, but it’s one that […]

A federal appeals court loosened the sentencing standards last month for criminal defendants who cooperate with government authorities—even if prosecutors don’t ask for leniency when judges dole out a sentence. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, ruling in the case of a woman who cooperated with federal prosecutors in a narcotics probe, […]

Harry Olivar is something of a rarity. He began his career as a litigator at the firms of Sullivan & Cromwell and Dewey Ballantine, exclusively representing corporate defendants such as Goldman Sachs & Co. He then joined Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges in Los Angeles in 2000, and started suing on behalf of shareholders […]

A federal judge in Boston recently blocked efforts by plaintiff lawyers to obtain valuable audit documents created during a company’s internal investigation—a supportive but sobering reminder that in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley age of multiple investigations by audit committees, regulators and civil litigants, companies must use care to ensure sensitive information uncovered during internal probes doesn’t end […]

U.S. companies facing private securities litigation appear to be paying more than ever to settle, according to a new report. While slightly fewer civil suits were filed last year than in 2004, the cost of settling those cases skyrocketed 156 percent, according to research from PricewaterhouseCoopers. Excluding the mammoth Enron and WorldCom settlements, the average […]

Accounting firms, law firms and other third-party vendors to corporations can breathe a sigh of relief these days, thanks to a recent federal appeals court decision that such vendors can’t be held liable in civil suits as “primary violators” of securities laws if they had only tangential involvement in an alleged fraud. Federal law states […]

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear its second securities case of the term this week, when it considers whether companies can appeal a federal judge’s decision to send a securities fraud class action to state court if the case doesn’t fall within the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act—the very law meant to force most securities […]

Tyco International, one of the most high-profile offenders in the corporate corruption scandals earlier this decade, settled a four-year investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission last week and paid a $50 million fine for allegations that the company’s former management schemed to inflate results by at least $1 billion over a six-year period. Without […]