This Week in FCPA-Episode 58, the Declination Edition
Weekly Brief: Lawyers Advised To Accept New Reality
Barclay’s CEO Jes Staley is stepping down immediately after a two-year investigation by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Conduct Authority into Staley’s “relationship with the disgraced financier...more
Hackers who targeted airport currency exchange mainstay Travelex in a ransomware attack on New Year’s Eve have alerted British media that they possess 5 GB of sensitive customer data from the company “since gaining access to...more
GE—still in streamlining mode—agreed yesterday to sell its biopharma business to Danaher (current CEO Larry’s Culp’s former company, btw) for a reported $21.4 billion in the form of $21 billion in cash and $400 million in...more
The Fed will wrap up its Open Markets Committee meeting today, and the recent dive on Wall Street has rather suddenly brought a bit of drama to what was a long-promised rate hike. Here’s a bit of background on what it’s been...more
Markets took a beating yesterday, with investors apparently put off by tech stocks, tensions with China, a recent jump in interest rates and government bond yields, and a tightening Fed monetary policy....more
The author who literally wrote the book on the Enron is warning that the next financial crisis is lurking underground—aka, fracking has “turned the energy world upside down,” and it’s pulled in a bunch of Wall Street along...more
Jobs report Friday! Here’s what to have in mind while you’re reviewing the numbers – Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch Apple officially hit the stupefying $1 trillion market cap mark yesterday, as its shares rose...more
Facebook’s disappointing Q2 earnings (and, presumably, some pent-up scandal-fueled anti-‘Book sentiment) sent its stock into freefall yesterday, erasing more than $120 billion from the company’s market value as shares dove...more
Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson announced on Monday that it will shift some of its motorcycle production overseas “to avoid retaliatory tariffs imposed by the European Union” in response to the White House’s trade moves....more
The UK’s Serious Fraud Office unveiled new charges against Barclays Bank yesterday over a $3 billion loan it made to Qatar in 2008 for the purpose of “allowing the firm to directly or indirectly acquire shares in Barclays...more
Breakingviews is raising an eyebrow at the news from yesterday about Broadcom’s unsolicited $105 billion offer for Qualcomm [the largest-ever proposed tech deal], especially in light of the “mountain of debt” Broadcom would...more
Lyft, armed with a fresh billion from Google’s venture investment arm (CapitalG), is looking seriously at a 2018 IPO. The CapG money raises Lyft’s valuation from $6.9 billion to more than $10 billion....more
Goldman’s deal-making advising is sputtering a bit these days, so Lloyd and the gang are working on generating some of those deals themselves through a new Innovations Lab internal venture....more
Uber has picked a new CEO. Word emerged late yesterday that the board selected current Expedia chief Dara Khosrowshahi to take the helm. Khosrowshahi beat out high-powered execs like Jeff Immelt and Meg Whitman in assuming...more
It has unquestionably been a difficult year for Barclays. Whether any of its former executives will face any jail time for their actions back in the 2008 financial crisis is an open question. As for current bank chief Staley,...more
You’ll remember Snap’s highly anticipated March IPO as a splashy affair, with a valuation in the $30+ billion range and a relatively consistent stock price. Well, reality hit hard yesterday, as Snap announced a $2.2 billion...more
Now that NAFTA seems to have an at-least-momentary reprieve, let’s take a breath and take a look at the four major industries that would be affected by any big changes in the deal....more
News emerged in past weeks that North Korean hackers were likely behind the theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh. You can add to that an attack on more than 20 Polish banks and an attempt at other...more
The FHLB Boston’s $5.9 billion MBS case against Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Credit Suisse, is back in Massachusetts state court—a result of the Supreme Court’s Lightfoot v. Cendant Mortgage case that held that Fannie Mae’s...more
Meanwhile, some banking officials—including a BOE representative speaking in NYC yesterday—contend that the legal expenses related to financial misconduct enforcement actions and litigation (roughly $275 billion for global...more
Dealbook gives us the story of Airgas, where founder Peter McCausland’s reticence to sell (despite serious shareholder pressure) resulted in a $5 billion windfall rather than the all-too-often result of a later sale for...more
And after all the sturm und drang surrounding the Hershey Trust and the Mondelez buyout offer over these past few months . . . it’s over. Mondelez announced yesterday that it’s no longer seeking to acquire the Hershey...more
Agencies Issue Proposal on Method to Adjust Threshold for Exempting Small Loans from Special Appraisal Requirements - On July 22, 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Reserve Board and the Office...more
On Tuesday, the SEC announced that Citigroup would pay $7 million and admit that it submitted “inaccurate trade data” to the Commission over a period of 15 years in order to resolve claims that it left out “thousands of...more