Compliance Perspectives: Volkswagen's Transformation
Daily Compliance News: March 3, 2020, the Devil’s Advocate edition
Compliance into the Weeds-Episode 62, Sentencing of VW Employee Oliver Schmidt
Day 20: What Does Innovation in Compliance Look Like?
The regional court of Braunschweig, as competent court for the headquarters of Volkswagen AG ("VW"), rendered a decision that is a significant setback for climate litigation activists in Germany by fully dismissing a...more
Auditing giant Ernst & Young will pay $100 million to U.S. authorities as part of a deal to resolve claims that “some of its auditors had cheated on ethics exams—and that the firm had done nothing to stop the practice.” That...more
Takeaways - Environmental groups have sued four large German companies, seeking to alter their products and activities to comply with climate goals far stricter than those set by German law. The cases derive in part...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
In order to comply with European antitrust rulings against it earlier this year, Google announced that for the first time it will begin charging telephone handset manufacturers to install Gmail, Google Maps, and other popular...more
The much publicised raid of U.S. law firm Jones Day’s Munich office and the seizure of documents relating to VW’s internal investigation by prosecutors in an investigation of Audi AG were legal, according to German courts. A...more
Introduction - A recent decision by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) (“FCC”) has renewed important questions with respect to legal privilege, its varied conceptual and practical scopes and...more
The recent Federal Constitutional Court decision severely limits legal privilege in German criminal investigations, but provides useful guidance to ensure privilege in limited circumstances. German government is called upon...more
A federal jury in Brooklyn has found former HSBC Holdings exec Mark Johnson guilty on 9 counts of front-running that grew out of the DOJ’s investigation into forex manipulation at HSBC....more
So much for the quiet off-ramping for SoFi’s Mike Cagney. The fintech company’s board announced on Friday that Cagney is out immediately as CEO, not at the end of the year as Cagney had announced earlier in the week....more
Just when you thought it could not get any worse, events remind us that things actually can get worse. Volkswagen suffered through a horrible scandal involving an elaborate scheme to circumvent emissions regulations. The...more
On July 28, 2017, a group of plaintiffs filed a putative class action in the Northern District of California against BMW, Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Daimler, and Mercedes-Benz, as well as auto-parts manufacturer Robert Bosch....more
Update on 5/12: Jones Day’s complaint has been thrown out by a court in Munich. That decision reinforces the importance of examining how attorney-client privilege is construed in different foreign jurisdictions. On March...more
The headlines generated by the Volkswagen emissions scandal continue to amaze the environmental community and the general public, both here and abroad. The events are shocking in part because they involve a household name in...more
That may well be the line most used by Volkswagen (VW) executives after the arrest of their fellow executive, Oliver Schmidt, this past week at the Miami airport. According to an article in the New York Times (NYT), entitled...more
By volume, December wasn’t an incredible month for US jobs. But the report did help cap a year that saw average hourly earnings rise 2.9%—the best since 2009 and a “turning point for the overall economy,” according to one...more
German auto manufacturer Volkswagen (VW) is reportedly using German privacy laws to resist turning over its top executives’ internal corporate emails and other communication materials to United States attorneys general and...more
Volkswagen AG (VW) has lost more than one-third of its value following the September issuance by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of a Notice of Violation (NOV) of the Clean Air Act to VW and certain affiliated...more
Whom to suspend during any Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigation is always a delicate question to answer. Unfortunately there is never an easy answer. As the Volkswagen (VW) emission-testing scandal continues to...more
Another major factor contributing to organized labor’s decline in the U.S. is the global economy. Asthe market for goods and services transitioned from domestic to global, U.S. companies faced downward pressure on labor costs...more