In 2014, the Delaware Supreme Court held in Kahn v. M&F Worldwide Corp. (“MFW”) that a court will apply the entire fairness standard of review to freeze-out merger transactions between a controlled corporation and its...more
On January 30, 2024, the Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery struck down the $55.8 billion compensation plan that Tesla, Inc.’s board of directors had granted to Tesla’s well-known CEO, Elon Musk, finding that the...more
2/7/2024
/ Board of Directors ,
Breach of Duty ,
Business Judgment Rule ,
Compensation Committee ,
Conflicts of Interest ,
Controlling Stockholders ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Elon Musk ,
Entire Fairness Standard ,
Executive Compensation ,
Fiduciary Duty ,
Independent Directors ,
Shareholder Litigation ,
Tesla
On March 1, 2023, in In re McDonald’s Corporation Stockholder Derivative Litigation, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster of Delaware’s Court of Chancery granted a motion to dismiss derivative claims against McDonald’s directors...more
3/8/2023
/ Board of Directors ,
Breach of Duty ,
Business Judgment Rule ,
Caremark claim ,
Congressional Investigations & Hearings ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Corporate Culture ,
Corporate Governance ,
Derivative Suit ,
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ,
Fiduciary Duty ,
Fraudulent Inducement ,
Internal Investigations ,
McDonalds ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Shareholder Litigation
We are proud to present our seventh annual Securities Litigation Year in Review publication, in which we analyze data for securities class actions filed nationally against publicly traded pharmaceutical, biotechnology,...more
On January 25, 2023, in In re McDonald’s Corporation Stockholder Derivative Litigation, Vice Chancellor Travis Laster of Delaware’s Court of Chancery denied a motion to dismiss a derivative lawsuit against David Fairhurst,...more
1/31/2023
/ Board of Directors ,
Breach of Duty ,
Caremark claim ,
Corporate Culture ,
Corporate Governance ,
Derivative Suit ,
Duty of Loyalty ,
Fiduciary Duty ,
McDonalds ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Shareholder Litigation
On December 14, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission unanimously adopted final rules relating to Rule 10b5-1 plans. Properly structured, a Rule 10b5-1 plan provides an affirmative defense to Rule 10b-5 liability for...more
On September 21, 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) charged the CEO, Sheng Fu, and former president, Ming Xu, of Chinese-based technology company Cheetah Mobile Inc. (“Cheetah Mobile” or the...more
9/30/2022
/ 10b5-1 Plans ,
Cease and Desist Orders ,
Civil Monetary Penalty ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Insider Trading ,
Material Nonpublic Information ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Exchange Act ,
Securities Fraud ,
Securities Violations
Summary of 2021 Trends, Themes, and Takeaways -
We are proud to present our sixth annual Securities Litigation Year in Review publication, in which we analyze data for securities class actions filed nationally against...more
On December 15, 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed amendments to Rule 10b5-1 trading plans, as SEC Chairman Gary Gensler first previewed in June in the wake of increased scrutiny of the plans. A Rule...more
On September 23, 2021, in United Food and Commercial Workers Union v. Zuckerberg et al., the Delaware Supreme Court restated and refined the demand futility test for bringing shareholder derivative claims when it affirmed the...more
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the automatic discovery stay established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 applies to cases under the Securities Act of 1933 when they are brought in...more
Rule 10b5-1 trading plans have faced increased scrutiny since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding public focus on stock sales by executives of public life sciences companies. On June 7, 2021, SEC Chairman...more
On March 5, 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed an enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York charging AT&T with repeated violations of Section 13 of the Securities...more
3/22/2021
/ Aiding and Abetting ,
AT&T ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Investors ,
Non-Public Information ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
Regulation FD ,
Section 13 ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Exchange Act ,
Securities Violations
Institutional Shareholder Services (“ISS”) published its proxy voting guidelines updates for 2021 (“Policy Updates”) on November 12, 2020. The changes that are likely to be of most interest to companies include new and...more
11/18/2020
/ Advance Notice ,
Annual Meeting ,
Board of Directors ,
Bylaws ,
Corporate Governance ,
Diversity ,
Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) ,
Exclusive Forum ,
Independent Director ,
Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) ,
Poison Pill ,
Proxy Season ,
Proxy Voting Guidelines ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
S&P ,
Shareholder Proposals ,
Virtual Meetings
Last month, the SEC announced that a public company had agreed to pay a $20 million penalty to resolve charges related to its repurchase of stock while supposedly in possession of material, non-public information (“MNPI”)...more
A lot of attention has been paid to board diversity – or lack thereof – in recent months. California enacted AB-979, which expanded upon California’s earlier gender diversity law and requires boards to make strides in other...more
11/11/2020
/ Board of Directors ,
Breach of Duty ,
Corporate Governance ,
Diversity ,
Diversity and Inclusion Standards (D&I) ,
Duty of Candor ,
Duty of Loyalty ,
False Statements ,
Fiduciary Duty ,
Good Faith ,
Misleading Statements ,
Misrepresentation ,
Proxy Statements ,
Public Statements ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ,
Shareholders
In a May 12, 2020 Keynote Address at the Securities Enforcement Forum West 2020, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Co-Director of Enforcement Steven Peikin discussed the SEC’s COVID-19-related enforcement...more
Recent statements by the Chair and the Directors of the Division of Corporation Finance and the Division of Enforcement of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) highlight the challenges that companies face as they...more
The ongoing global outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) raises important considerations for life sciences companies subject to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) disclosure and reporting requirements. As...more
While COVID-19 will affect the operations of different companies in different ways, the boards of directors of every company should think critically about their oversight role in the context of this unprecedented global...more
On March 18, 2020, the Delaware Supreme Court issued a decision in Salzberg, et al. v. Sciabacucchi, No. 346, 2019 (Del. Sup. Ct. Mar. 18, 2020), upholding the validity of charter provisions or bylaws that require claims...more
On October 1, 2019, the Delaware Court of Chancery applied the Delaware Supreme Court’s recent decision on Caremark board oversight claims in the context of operating in a highly regulated industry to allow derivative claims...more
Recent shareholder suits show a heightened scrutiny of routine proxy disclosures in order to challenge non-employee director compensation. Plaintiffs’ attorneys are focusing on non-employee director compensation and...more
The Delaware Court of Chancery issued a decision on Wednesday in Sciabacucchi v. Salzberg, et al., C.A. No. 2017-0931-JTL (Del. Ch. Dec. 19, 2018) declaring that federal forum selection provisions purporting to require claims...more
The Securities and Exchange Commission (the Commission) has published a report of an investigation (the Report) into whether certain public companies that suffered financial losses as a result of cyber-related fraud violated...more