On August 26, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced an order against a registered investment adviser, Sound Point Capital Management, LP, for its failure to “establish, maintain, and enforce written...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
On December 26, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) issued an administrative cease and desist order against a middle market private equity firm (the Private Equity Firm) for failure to enforce its own...more
On Wednesday, March 1 the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its first-ever prosecution of an individual for insider trading based on an executive’s use of 10b5-1 trading plans. Terren Peizer, the executive chairman of...more
The Commission created Rule 10b5-1 plans two decades ago. The rule essentially creates a safe haven for those who in good faith trade securities and are not in possession of inside information....more
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has released its much-anticipated rule amendments regarding the use of trading plans by insiders. On Dec. 14, 2022, the SEC finalized amendments to Rule 10b5-1 of the Securities...more
As the SECond Opinions Blog continues our review of FY 2021 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) enforcement activity, we take a deeper dive into the agency's use of technology to generate enforcement leads. The...more
On January 14, 2022, Judge William Orrick of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order denying a former biopharmaceutical company executive’s motion to dismiss and allowing the...more
Key Takeaways - The COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has undoubtedly increased firms’ exposure to market abuse risks in a number of ways: Due to the rapidly changing consequences of restrictions caused by COVID-19 for...more
The heads of the SEC Enforcement Division, in remarks today, reminded market participants of the need to keep a close eye on the persons that may have material nonpublic information. In the remarks, they noted, “[f]or...more
Earlier this month, in a bipartisan vote of 384 to 7, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 8-K Trading Act of 2019. A similar bill has been introduced in the Senate and given the bipartisan support in the House, is...more
On the last day of its current session, the Supreme Court announced it will consider whether the Dodd-Frank whistleblower protections extend to corporate insiders who blow the whistle on their employers by reporting the...more
Most in-house counsel of public companies are very familiar with the reporting obligations required by the trifecta – Form 8-Ks, Form 10-Qs and Form 10-Ks – but they oftentimes rely on outside counsel to help determine...more
The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy. (Penguin Press, 2012) by Professor David Nasaw is one of several books that I am currently reading. As a securities lawyer, the following sentence...more