PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Raising Capital 101: A Securities Podcast - What Makes it a Securities Offering?
All Things Investigations: Anchored in Fraud: Mike DeBernardis and Shayda Vance on Austal USA’s Scandal
The Legal Tightrope: Surviving Parallel Investigations
Navigating Government Contracts: Diana Shaw on Oversight and Whistleblower Protections
From Court to Code: Smart Contracts and Arbitration
Episode 335 -- The New DOJ Whistleblower Program
Navigating Emerging Privacy Issues in Financial Services — The Consumer Finance Podcast
Implications of the SEC Cybersecurity Disclosure Rule
Corruption, Crime and Compliance: SEC Suffers Dismissal of Claims in Solarwinds Securities Fraud Case
Episode 334 -- District Court Dismisses Bulk of SEC Claims Against Solarwinds
The Woody Report: The Solar Winds Dismissal
In That Case: Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy
Corruption, Crime and Compliance: Deep Dive into The SEC’s Settlement with R&R Donnelly on Cybersecurity Controls
Episode 332 -- Deep Dive into SEC’s Internal Controls and Cybersecurity Settlement with R&R Donnelly
The Justice Insiders Podcast: Jarkesy’s Implications for the Administrative State
DE Under 3: OFCCP Must Shut Down its Administrative Court Prosecutions as a Result of SCOTUS’ SEC Jury Trial Case Decision
Dogecoin’s Day in Court
Unpacking the Lummis-Gillibrand Payment Stablecoin Act: Implications for the Digital Asset Industry — The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Podcast: Is Cryptocurrency a Security (like an orange grove)?
Navigating the Regulatory Waters: The SEC's Wells Notice to Uniswap and its Impact on DeFi — The Crypto Exchange Podcast
Virtually all organizations have an obligation to safeguard their personal data against unauthorized access or use. Failure to comply with such obligations can lead to significant financial and reputational harm. In a...more
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues to investigate companies for including language in their employment and separation agreements or retail client settlement agreements that potentially discourages...more
Last Lap in SEC RILA Rulemaking Critical Unresolved Issues - Congress directed the SEC to adopt a new registration statement for registered indexed annuities (RILAs) by the end of June. Several months ago, the SEC...more
The SEC has opened a new track in the whistleblower litigation derby. While SEC enforcement actions concerning whistleblower violations are nothing new, they typically involve claims that companies precluded employees from...more
In January 2024, the SEC denied New Civil Liberties Alliance’s petition to halt so-called gag orders. The SEC has a procedural rule that requires it to impose these orders on individuals and companies settling with the SEC on...more
In this issue, we cover regulatory developments from the fourth quarter of 2023 impacting the investment management sector, including the use of shareholder rights plans as an alternative to state control share statutes....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
Companies routinely use separation agreements with departing employees. Through those agreements, the employee receives some type of separation benefit (typically a payment or severance) in exchange for waiving and releasing...more
The Background: The CFTC Division of Enforcement ("Enforcement") recently issued an advisory on new enforcement policies that increase the agency's focus on corporate accountability through increasing civil penalties,...more
Since 2015, the SEC has brought nearly two dozen enforcement actions for violations of the whistleblower protection rules under Rule 21F-17(a) against employers for actions taken to impede reporting to the SEC. The bulk of...more
No Longer Just a Matter of Paying the Fine and Moving On. Corporate settlement agreements used to be straightforward—pay the penalty and move on. Now, these resolutions rival complex business transactions, including...more
On August 25, the SEC entered into a settlement agreement with a national bank that requires the bank to pay a $35 million civil penalty for overcharging more than 10,900 investment advisory accounts over $26.8 million in...more
NBA Hall of Famer Paul Pierce, known by basketball fans as “The Truth,” has run afoul of the SEC. No, not that SEC—Pierce played college basketball at Kansas in the Big 12. No, this would be the U.S. Securities and Exchange...more
Payward Ventures, Inc., d/b/a Kraken, the cryptocurrency exchange, has entered into a $30 million settlement agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over allegations the company failed to register its...more
Over the years, the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken aim at common language in settlement and severance agreements regarding nondisclosure and confidentiality....more
The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission reached a $41 million settlement with GOL Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes S.A. (“GOL”) to resolve criminal and civil foreign bribery charges....more
On June 30, 2022, the SEC filed a settled action against Hamilton Investment Counsel, LLC (the “Firm”) and its chief compliance officer (“HIC CCO”). Notably, the SEC charged the HIC CCO with willfully aiding and abetting the...more
The sun is shining, children are out of school, families are headed off on summer vacations, and the SEC is … bringing enforcement actions against companies for 2020 fraud related to COVID-19 products. One such action was...more
The SEC announced another FCPA settlement in 2022. FCPA enforcement, in general, is picking up. Tenaris, a global supplier of steel pipes and related services for the energy industry, agreed to pay the SEC $78 million to...more
Key Takeaways- The United States Securities and Exchange Commission announced a settlement against chip manufacturing company Nvidia Corporation, on May 6, 2022, for inadequate disclosures concerning the impact of...more
Even though the size of the KT Corp. SEC enforcement action is relatively small, the underlying misconduct provides a number of important lessons learned. ...more
On January 28, 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") announced a settled fraud case with HeadSpin, Inc., a technology start-up, that allegedly engaged in a scheme to boost the company's valuation to more...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
The SEC announced settled charges against formerly publicly-traded Leaf Group Ltd. for failing to adequately evaluate and disclose in its annual proxy statement the lack of independence of a director and a board committee as...more
Nikola Corporation stormed onto the electric vehicle scene in 2016 offering concepts for zero-emission vehicles. While the SEC does not set emission standards, they have long had standards for omissions – and Nikola is being...more