Regulatory Enforcement

Though a recent Reuters study found that the SEC has levied more than $500 million in fines this year, the data might not be as frightening for public companies as it sounds. According to Kevin Drawbaugh, who conducted the survey, the bulk of the fines came from the mutual fund timing and research analyst settlements. […]

Reversing an SEC decision that had been based on a section of Sarbanes-Oxley, a federal appeals court ruled last week that two former Gemstar-TV Guide executives could seek $37.6 million in severance payments and back pay. Yuen The executives, former CEO Henry Yuen and former CFO Elsie Leung, left Gemstar in November 2002 amid a […]

Earlier this week, the SEC charged Lucent and nine current and former executives with securities fraud. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Lucent’s violations of GAAP were due to the “fraudulent and reckless actions of the defendants and deficient internal controls that led to numerous accounting errors by others.” But the severity of the fine was […]

Last week, a U.S. Department of Labor administrative law judge ruled that Atlantic Coast Airlines must compensate a former employee after she was fired for blowing the whistle on alleged fraud. The employee, former labor relations manager Stacey Platone, had alleged that some members of the pilots’ union were abusing “flight loss pay,” wherein pilots […]

Study by two professors at Princton and Baruch College examines the role of executive compensation in inducing management behavior that triggers private securities litigation.

BIOS William Paine is Vice Chairman of the Corporate and Securities Litigation Group at Hale and Dorr. Paine has substantial experience defending securities class actions brought in federal and state courts, and typically represents clients charged with violations of the securities laws, and clients subject to government investigations and civil enforcement actions. He regularly represents […]

The chief financial officer of a puny bank in a rural Virginia town appears to be the first individual to get back his job under the new whistleblower rules mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. On Jan. 28, Stephen L. Purcell, Administrative Law Judge for the Department of Labor, published an order that David Welch be […]

Though 2003 brought three of the largest shareholder class action settlements of all time, researchers at NERA Economic Consulting have found that Sarbanes-Oxley has had “no statistically significant impact” on class action filings, settlement values or recovery rates. Buckberg According to the research, led by Dr. Elaine Buckberg, all those key metrics have remained flat […]

LITIGATION The annual probability of facing a securities class action lawsuit has increased 40 percent since 1995. That’s according to Dr. Vinita Juneja, a SVP at NERA Economic Consulting, who recently completed a quantitative analysis of SOX’s impact on the volume and nature of class action litigation. According to Juneja, dismissals have also slowed since […]

Siebel Systems could wind up having the dubious distinction of being the first company to twice violate the Securities and Exchange Commission’s three-year old rule regarding selectively disclosing key information. The software maker has revealed in a regulatory filing that the SEC may take enforcement action against the company and several officers for statements allegedly […]