News & Analysis as of

Confidential Information Whistleblowers Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Allen Matkins

Still More On Whether The SEC Exceeded Its Authority In Adopting Rule 21F-17

Allen Matkins on

Yesterday's post again discussed whether the Securities and Exchange Commission exceeded its authority in adopting Rule 21F-17(a), which provides...more

Allen Matkins

Does The SEC's Jurisdiction Really Extend To Any Person?

Allen Matkins on

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it had settled charges against a broker-dealer and two investment advisers for impeding their clients from reporting securities law violations to the SEC. ...more

Troutman Pepper

Top 10 Tips for Drafting Whistleblower Compliant Arrangements

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Background - Under Section 922 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, Congress expanded protections for whistleblowers reporting possible violations of federal securities laws to the...more

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

Balancing Act: Sharing Information From an Internal Investigation Without Waiving Privilege

A whistleblower has triggered a race against time: An internal inquiry, directed by the audit committee and overseen by external counsel, has been launched in response to allegations that revenue was recorded without proper...more

Thomas Fox - Compliance Evangelist

Pre-Taliation Continues to Rear It’s Ugly Head

DE Shaw, a prominent financial services firm, recently settled a retaliation case with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a staggering $10 million. It was settled via an Administrative Order. This settlement...more

Littler

SEC Continues to Attack Non-Disclosure Agreements and Personnel Policy Provisions that Could Impede Employees from Reporting...

Littler on

The SEC continues to review non-disclosure agreements and other confidential business information provisions of publicly traded companies to ensure whistleblowers are not restricted from freely communicating with the agency...more

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP

The FCA Pledges to Improve Its Whistleblowing Framework

Overview - A survey conducted by the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in early 2022, but published only in 2023, has revealed the stark reality that the regulator is not doing enough for whistleblowers. 15...more

Stark & Stark

Navigating 2023's Employment Landscape: Legal Compliance and the Perils of Template Reuse

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So far, 2023 has proven to be a particularly active year in the employment space, with federal government agencies weighing in on a variety of issues. Of note, severance agreements have been a specific target of both the...more

Jackson Lewis P.C.

New Law Rewarding Whistleblowers May Lead to Substantial Increase in Whistleblower Claims

Jackson Lewis P.C. on

In conjunction with an omnibus spending bill, Congress passed in late December 2022, the Anti-Money Laundering Whistleblower Improvement Act, which on December 29, 2022, President Biden signed into law. This law permits...more

Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto LLP

Bloomberg Reporting of SEC Whistleblower Program Misses the Big Story

Bloomberg’s coverage of an August 26, 2022 vote by the SEC Commissioners to modify two rules governing the Commission’s whistleblower program missed the real story. In its coverage, Bloomberg focused only on comments made by...more

Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto LLP

DC Circuit Decision Upholds Whistleblower Confidentiality to Protect IRS Whistleblowers from Retaliatory FOIAs

On July 19, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a ruling in Montgomery v. Internal Revenue Serv., a case concerning the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) handling of Freedom of...more

Seyfarth Shaw LLP

Recent SEC Order Reiterates Need for Affirmative Whistleblower Exclusion

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Everyone generally agrees that people and organizations should be able to protect their proprietary and valuable information. But one area where we’ve seen legislative fretting is when that principle potentially impedes...more

Wiley Rein LLP

A Client Alert About Client Alerts – SEC Cites Alerts In Issuing $400,000 Fine Related to Whistleblower Protections

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What: On June 22, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled charges against The Brink's Company (Brinks) for requiring employees to sign confidentiality agreements that prohibited disclosure of any financial...more

King & Spalding

SEC Enforcement of Human Capital Disclosures: The First Fingerprints

King & Spalding on

In a September 21, 2021 press release, Activision Blizzard confirmed that the SEC Enforcement Division issued a subpoena “to the Company and several current and former employees and executives regarding disclosures on...more

Bass, Berry & Sims PLC

SEC Grants Eligibility Waiver to Issue Whistleblower Award

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently awarded $3 million to joint whistleblowers despite concluding that the whistleblowers did not satisfy the technical eligibility requirements for receiving an award. See...more

NAVEX

Why You Shouldn’t Relax on Pretaliation—Even if Policymakers Do

NAVEX on

About two years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made history when it brought the first “pretaliation” whistleblower enforcement action against KBR Inc., a technology and engineering firm in Houston. The...more

Farella Braun + Martel LLP

Revenge of the Whistle-blower: Possible Consequences of Compliance Failures

In a company with a robust compliance culture, potential whistleblowers can express their concerns without fear of retribution. By contrast, the penalty for a culture that silences whistleblowers just got steeper. Companies...more

Morrison & Foerster LLP

Employment Law Commentary - Volume 29, Issue 1

The Cost Of Keeping Things Quiet: Crackdown On Confidentiality Clauses Calls For Explicit Carve-Outs - In last February’s Employment Law Commentary, we discussed best practices for drafting separation agreements. Among...more

Thomas Fox - Compliance Evangelist

Whistleblower Conference Agenda Sizzles with Hot Topics

2016 was more than simply the most robust year in Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement. It was also a record year in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) whistleblower awards and additionally the year the SEC...more

Proskauer - Whistleblower Defense

Sixth Circuit Declines to Address the Definition of Dodd Frank “Whistleblower”

On January 13, 2017, the Sixth Circuit in Verble v. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, LLC, declined an opportunity to be the third federal appellate court to address the definition of “whistleblower” under Dodd Frank’s...more

Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP

Corporate Investigations and White Collar Defense - December 2016

Insider Trading: Supreme Court Affirms Salman - Why it matters: On December 6, 2016 the Supreme Court decided Salman v. U.S., in which it upheld the petitioner’s insider trading conviction. The Court found its 1983...more

Perkins Coie

Recent Whistleblower Protection Actions by SEC and Congress Add Risk to Severance Agreements

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Two recent SEC enforcement actions that describe how severance agreements may violate whistleblower protections under the federal securities laws if not properly drafted were the subject of a recent article by Perkins Coie...more

Baker Donelson

SEC, FINRA and the DOL Take Aim at Confidentiality Provisions in Firm Agreements

Baker Donelson on

On October 24, 2016, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)'s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) released an alert examining whistleblower rule compliance and the use of...more

Locke Lord LLP

OSHA Joins SEC In Scrutinizing Separation and Settlement Agreements

Locke Lord LLP on

In most separation or settlement agreements with employees, the goal is to achieve finality to the separation or claim and to secure the release of any legal claims in return for certain promises. Having paid good money to...more

Proskauer - Whistleblower Defense

Proskauer Joins Heads of SEC & OSHA Whistleblower Programs in Webinar

On September 27, 2016, Proskauer Partner Steven J. Pearlman, co-head of the Whistleblowing & Retaliation Practice Group, participated in a Bloomberg webinar with Jane Norberg, Acting Chief of the SEC Office of the...more

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