On February 11, SEC Acting Chair Lee announced that the Commission no longer would permit settlements in enforcement actions to include, or be contingent on the grant of, waivers of statutory disqualifications that flow from...more
June 20, 2019 – Walmart (NYSE: WMT) and its subsidiary, WMT Brasilia, agreed to a combined criminal penalty and disgorgement of $282M, together with WMT’s criminal guilty plea and undertakings in an NPA, to reach a global...more
6/21/2019
/ Accounting Fraud ,
Brazil ,
Bribery ,
Compliance ,
Corporate Misconduct ,
Corruption ,
Criminal Sanctions ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) ,
Foreign Subsidiaries ,
Internal Controls ,
Popular ,
Retailers ,
Risk Assessment ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Settlement ,
Third-Party ,
Wal-Mart
After markets closed on Friday the 13th, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced an $864 million settlement regarding Moody’s credit ratings of residential mortgage-backed securities (“RMBS”) and collateralized debt...more
1/19/2017
/ Civil Monetary Penalty ,
Collateralized Debt Obligations ,
Cooperative Compliance Regime ,
Credit Rating Agencies ,
Credit Ratings ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Financial Crisis ,
Financial Institutions ,
Financial Markets ,
FIRREA ,
Moody's ,
Rating Agencies ,
RMBS ,
Securities ,
Securities Violations ,
Settlement
On September 30, the SEC issued its second round of mass settled actions over municipal securities disclosure issues, as part of its Municipal Continuing Disclosure Cooperation (“MCDC”) Initiative. In this round, 22 municipal...more
On February 3, the Department of Justice and 19 State Attorneys General announced their $1.375 Billion settlement of DOJ’s FIRREA suit and related State AG actions against Standard & Poor’s and its parent McGraw-Hill...more
Since 2004, FINRA has required its member firms to include in settlement-agreement confidentiality clauses an exception expressly allowing a customer to respond to regulatory inquiries. See Notice to Members 04-44. FINRA...more
The SEC recently announced another issuer settlement under its Continuing Disclosure Cooperation Initiative (see our blogs First Settled Proceeding (July 23, 2014). In this settled action, Kansas consented to the standard...more
On July 22, the SEC approved amendments to FINRA Rule 2081 that prohibit member firms from conditioning arbitration settlements (or seeking to) upon a customer’s assent to CRD expungement relief. The Rule amendments prohibit...more
The SEC announced July 8 its first settled administrative proceeding against a municipal issuer under its Municipal Continuing Disclosure Cooperation (“MCDC”) Initiative. In its Order, the SEC charged Kings Canyon Joint...more
I recently wrote about Judge Rakoff’s refusal to enter the SEC’s proposed consent decree in SEC v. Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., 827 F. Supp. 2d 328 (SDNY 2011) – and the shift in SEC enforcement policy that it prompted. ...more
6/5/2014
/ Chevron Deference ,
Citigroup ,
Consent Decrees ,
Enforcement ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Interlocutory Appeals ,
Judge Rakoff ,
Risk Management ,
SEC v Citigroup ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Settlement
FINRA operates the Central Registration Depository (“CRD”) – the central, publicly-accessible licensure and registration information source on the US securities industry. Industry members seek to remove – “expunge” – ...more