On September 9, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced it had settled charges against seven public companies that utilized employment and employment-related agreements that the SEC believed violated its...more
On January 16, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a record $18 million sanction against JP Morgan for Rule 21F-17(a) violations, sending the strongest message yet that the SEC is cracking down on...more
Employers should check their confidentiality and severance agreements for a common oversight that, for some, is becoming a costly error. Recent enforcement activity by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Rule...more
While jingle bells have only just begun to ring, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement bells have been ringing steadily throughout year. In recent months, the SEC announced significant settlements with...more
SEC Charges CBRE, Inc. and D.E. Shaw & Co., L.P, with Violating Rule 21F-17(a) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 - On September 19, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) announced that it...more
Public companies should be mindful not to interfere with or retaliate against whistleblowers, and stretching is best reserved for the yoga mat, not the numbers in a company's public disclosures. So says the U.S. Securities...more
Activision Blizzard Workplace Misconduct Allegations Transformed into Securities Violations - In another victory for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Climate and ESG Task Force, videogame developer...more
On February 3, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that video game developer Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Activision) agreed to pay $35 million to settle accusations that it violated whistleblower...more
Section 21F, titled "Whistleblower Incentives and Protection," is a set of provisions within the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that govern, among other things, the rights and obligations of SEC whistleblowers and the...more
Most likely, what comes to mind when you think about companies’ impeding the ability of a whistleblower to communicate with the SEC are allegations of overly ambitious confidentiality provisions in employment agreements or...more
On July 21, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York held that the whistleblower protections established in SOX are not restricted to employee whistleblowers, but also extend to shareholders. SEC...more
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Whistleblower Program under the Biden administration has picked up where it left off under President Obama, aggressively enforcing Rule 21F-17(a) against employers whose policies may...more
The Situation: The SEC has brought another in a growing list of whistleblower cases critical of entities for potentially attempting to impede an individual from communicating with the agency. In July 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall...more
In a recently settled SEC enforcement action, the defendant asked employees to sign an acknowledgement, upon hire and on an annual basis, that they had received, read, and would adhere to the defendant’s employee manual. ...more
Whistleblower Developments is a periodic report covering significant cases, decisions, proposals, and legislation related to whistleblower statutes and how they may impact your business. Recent developments include: ...more
On November 4, 2019, the SEC announced that it had filed an amended complaint against online auction portal Collectors Café and CEO Mykalai Kontilai, alleging Kontilai tried to prevent investors from communicating with the...more
In this episode of The Proskauer Brief, Kate Napalkova, special employee benefits and executive compensation counsel, and associate Oleg Zakatov discuss potential pitfalls that lurk in employment agreements and other employee...more
Just as Picasso had several phases of his career, the lifecycle of the Goldman Sachs internal whistleblower program may be getting ready to have more phases....more
In the past two years, the SEC has charged six public companies with violating SEC Rule 21F-17, which prohibits confidentiality agreements that could impede employees from making whistleblower claims directly to the SEC....more
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the Whistleblower recently released its sixth Annual Report on the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Program to Congress, which details information on the SEC’s activities and bounty...more