Key Points -
SEC Enforcement and PCAOB Enforcement both are pursuing more significant sanctions against auditors, particularly with respect to civil money penalties.
Expect 2023 enforcement against auditors to focus...more
Key Points-
In two landmark decisions, the Supreme Court and the 1st Circuit significantly pared back the scope of the federal mail and wire fraud statutes. In Ciminelli v. United States, a political corruption case, the...more
In 2018, an investment professional sued the firm he co-founded for wrongful termination and federal privacy law violations associated with the former employer’s remote accessing into a desktop computer it had purchased for...more
Key Points -
On March 1, 2023, the SEC and DOJ filed insider trading charges against a public company executive alleging he traded pursuant to 10b5-1 trading plans he adopted while he was in possession of material...more
Key Points -
On March 2, 2023, DOJ announced that its NSD would hire more than 25 new prosecutors to investigate and prosecute sanctions evasion, export controls violations and similar economic crimes. Consistent with...more
Key Points -
On February 3, 2023, Activision Blizzard settled charges with the SEC, agreeing to pay $35 million to resolve novel claims that the company failed to maintain adequate disclosure controls to track workplace...more
On Tuesday, February 7, the Division of Examinations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released its 2023 Examination Priorities. Private fund sponsors and managers should pay attention to the Priorities for two...more
Key Points -
The recent indictment and multiple regulatory enforcement actions brought against a crypto trader alleged to have committed market manipulation highlight the ongoing fractured oversight of the crypto markets...more
2/3/2023
/ CFTC ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) ,
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Howey ,
Popular ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Swaps ,
Wire Fraud
Key Points -
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s “Bridgegate” decision in Kelly v. United States, a divided panel in the 2nd Circuit reversed its prior decision in United States v. Blaszczak, and held that a federal...more
Key Points -
On January 17, 2023, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. announced revisions to the DOJ Criminal Division’s corporate enforcement policy that offer new incentives to self-disclose corporate...more
Late last year, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler warned private fund managers that they should be prepared for increased regulatory scrutiny. Shortly thereafter, in February 2022, the SEC announced...more
Key Points -
On September 15, 2022, Deputy AG Lisa O. Monaco released a Memorandum and provided remarks announcing several DOJ policy changes to prioritize and strengthen the Department’s prosecution of corporate crime....more
Key Points -
The SEC and the FCA each publish annual reports, which can offer a useful insight into their enforcement actions.
The data in the reports only represents a snapshot of the regulators’ activities, but is...more
On May 3, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it was nearly doubling the size of the Enforcement Division’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit in order to pursue cases involving crypto asset offerings,...more
Key Points -
The SEC’s Division of Examinations published a risk alert that, in the context of a focus on MNPI, highlighted observed deficiencies related to the use of alternative data by private fund managers and other...more
Materiality in the context of the federal securities laws has been a topic of repeated focus by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the courts over the years. That attention, however, has not necessarily produced...more
Key Points -
The DOJ and CFTC have filed insider trading charges against a Houston-based energy trader for allegedly disclosing confidential information to a third party who then used the information to trade profitably....more
Private funds should be prepared for increased oversight from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), following a landmark year of enforcement cases. In 2021, the Commission brought 159 enforcement actions against...more
2/3/2022
/ Enforcement Actions ,
Fiduciary Duty ,
Form PF ,
Fund Managers ,
Investment Adviser ,
Investment Advisers Act of 1940 ,
Policies and Procedures ,
Private Equity ,
Private Funds ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Violations
Gary Gensler, Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), signaled a new era of cybersecurity law (and accompanying enforcement) in his keynote address “Cybersecurity and Securities Laws” on January 24, 2022,...more
As previously reported, in August 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint in SEC v. Panuwat, initiating the first enforcement action seeking to proscribe as prohibited insider trading the practice...more
Any doubts over whether the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission considers advisory fees to be a focus area for 2022 were dispelled over the past several weeks. In four separate public statements, the SEC and the Staff of...more
Key Points -
On October 6, 2021, the DOJ announced two new initiatives: the Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative and the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.
The Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative will fight rising cyber threats...more
10/13/2021
/ Cryptocurrency ,
Cyber Incident Reporting ,
Cybersecurity ,
Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) ,
Department of Defense (DOD) ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
DFARS ,
False Claims Act (FCA) ,
Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) ,
Homeland Security Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ,
NDAA ,
Popular ,
Supply Chain
On September 23, 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged a quantitative analyst for “a scheme to violate the federal securities laws by using material nonpublic information to secretly trade ahead of (i.e.,...more
In this episode, Akin Gump financial regulatory partner Helen Marshall and white collar defense and government investigations practice co-head Michael Asaro look at SEC and FCA’s annual reports to discuss similarities,...more
9/22/2021
/ Annual Reports ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Enforcement Actions ,
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ,
Financial Regulatory Agencies ,
Financial Services Industry ,
Investigations ,
Penalties ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Securities Regulation ,
Securities Violations ,
UK
Key Points -
The SEC has charged App Annie, Inc. and its former CEO with violations of Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5, which constitute the primary mechanism for enforcing insider trading violations.
This...more