WORD OF THE DAY® for Hedge Funds – 10b5-1 Plan
On June 23, 2025, U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer of the Central District of California sentenced a former Chairman and CEO of a behavioral healthcare company to 42 months in federal prison. This conviction represents the...more
AI Claims, Executive Pay, and a New SEC Playbook - While summer temperatures continue to sizzle, things cooled considerably at the SEC in the second quarter of 2025. In this Snapshot, we examine Chairman Paul Atkins’...more
Executive Sentenced to 42 Months in Prison - Company insiders rely upon Rule 10b5-1 trading plans to sell stock pursuant to predetermined trades, allowing them to later trade securities even though they may be in...more
On June 23, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Terren Scott Peizer, founder of Ontrak Inc., a Miami-based publicly traded health care company, has been sentenced to three and one half years in prison by a...more
On April 25, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance (the “SEC”) updated its Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations (“C&DI”) pertaining to Rule 10b5-1 trading plans, which provide an...more
The SEC staff recently published updates to its interpretations (CDIs) for Rule 10b5-1 – the insider trading exemption for pre-established trading plans....more
Last week, Corp Fin did some spring cleaning in the Rule 10b5-1 area by adding two new CDIs, revising 20 CDIs, and withdrawing three CDIs so they better jibe with the amendments to Rule 10b5-1 in 2022....more
On April 25, 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance (Corp Fin) updated its Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations (CDIs) relating to Rule 10b5-1 by issuing two new CDIs,...more
On April 25, the SEC staff added two new Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations (CDIs), revised 20 CDIs and withdrew three CDIs related to 10b5-1 plans. The SEC staff largely revised the CDIs to conform to the 2022 Rule...more
Here’s the deal: • A Rule 10b5‐1 plan is a written securities trading plan that is designed to comply with Rule 10b5‐1(c) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”)....more
Here’s the deal: A Rule 10b5‐1 plan is a written securities trading plan that is designed to comply with Rule 10b5‐1(c) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”)....more
On November 13, 2024, during the Practicing Law Institute’s 56th Annual Institute on Securities Regulation, a panel of experts discussed recent disclosure developments for public companies. The main topics of discussion...more
A federal jury in Los Angeles recently convicted the former CEO of Ontrak Inc. (a publicly traded company), Terren Peizer, for engaging in an insider trading scheme using Rule 10b5-1 trading plans. The insider trading...more
Potential regulatory uncertainty in light of Supreme Court decisions. The recent Supreme Court term produced several landmark decisions affecting administrative agencies, including...more
In April, we issued an alert discussing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") and Department of Justice’s ("DOJ") expansion of insider trading to 10b5-1 plans. On June 21, 2024, a federal jury in California...more
As discussed in our March 3, 2023 post, the DOJ and SEC brought an insider trading case against the founder and former CEO and Executive Chairman of Ontrak, Inc. based upon the former executive failing the “clean hands”...more
The U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ") won at trial in its first insider trading prosecution against an executive based exclusively on his sales of stock under 10b5-1 trading plans....more
With the compliance deadline for the newly issued Item 408(b) of Regulation S-K approaching for calendar-year-end companies and the increased use by the Department of Justice and the SEC of data analytics in pursuing insider...more
On June 21, 2024, a Los Angeles federal jury convicted former Ontrak, Inc. CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors Terren S. Peizer of insider trading in a first-of-its-kind prosecution based exclusively on the use of Rule...more
Back in March 2023, the DOJ unsealed an indictment against Terren Peizer, formerly the executive chair of Ontrak, Inc., representing the first time, according to the press release, that the DOJ brought “criminal insider...more
One of the routine duties of counsel for a public company is advising officers and directors on their trades in company stock and their SEC responsibilities when they leave. Because those discussions are routine, it may be...more
On April 5, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") won a jury verdict in its first "shadow trading" insider trading action. Only a few weeks before this verdict, a court denied a motion to dismiss a...more
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continued its significant focus on public companies in 2023 with its enforcement and rulemaking programs, and this heightened level of attention will continue throughout 2024....more
Many thanks to thecorporatecounsel.net blog for posting this memorandum to the ABA’s Joint Committee on Employee Benefits from three members of that committee regarding their informal discussions with SEC staff about a couple...more
We had previously reported that beginning with the next annual report on Form 10-K, most US-listed issuers would be required to make more extensive disclosures on their share repurchase programs and insider transactions...more