Sky Blog
SUMMARY
Citing a trend in recent years of private equity firms acquiring insurers, particularly life insurers writing fixed and indexed annuity contracts, the New York State Department of Financial Services on May 14, 2014 released for public comment proposed amendments …
In May 2014, the SEC approved FINRA’s proposed amendments to Rule 5110, commonly called the Corporate Financing Rule.[1] The Corporate Financing Rule addresses commercial fairness in underwriting and other arrangements for the distribution of securities. Rule 5110 provides for review …
The following post comes to us from Gregory Scopino, Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and Special Counsel with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It is based on his recent paper, “Do Automated Trading Systems Dream …
On May 8, 2014, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Board (the “FRB”) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (the “Proposed Rule”) implementing the financial institutions concentration limit provision in new Section 14 of …
On May 6, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held, in a case of first impression, that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank precludes claims brought under the Securities …
In a recent speech [1], Andrew Bowden, Director of the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (“OCIE”), highlighted the OCIE staff’s findings from more than 150 exams of newly registered private equity fund managers conducted since the SEC’s inspection …
The following post comes to us from Renee M. Jones, Professor at Boston College Law School. It is based on her recent paper entitled “Unfit for Duty: The Officer and Director Bar as a Remedy for Fraud,” which is forthcoming …
In In re Facebook, Inc., IPO Securities & Derivative Litigation, 2014 WL 1760332 (S.D.N.Y. May 2, 2014), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected the argument that underwriters and selling stockholders in an IPO …
The following post comes to us from Gregory Scopino, Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and Special Counsel with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It is based on his recent paper, “The (Questionable) Legality of High-Speed …
On May 7, the Fourth Circuit held that the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus Capital Group, Inc. v. First Derivative Traders, 131 S. Ct. 2296 (2011), did not apply in the context of a criminal prosecution for a violation …
The following post comes to us from Carlos Berdejo, Associate Professor at Loyola Law School. It is based on his recent paper entitled “Going Public After the JOBS Act,” which is forthcoming in the Ohio State Law Journal and is …
The following post comes to us from James F. Reda, Managing Director, Kimberly A. Glass, Principal, and David M. Schmidt, Senior Consultant, all in the HR & Compensation Consulting Practice at Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. It is based on …
The need for risk and compliance officers is skyrocketing as lenders and financial market participants remain under strict scrutiny in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. J. P. Morgan Chase & Co. recently announced plans to add 13,000 officers …
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington recently construed the terms of a customary loan agreement to preclude certain hedge funds viewed as “acquir[ing] distressed debt and engag[ing] in predatory lending” from voting on a debtor’s plan …
Two recent developments have changed the playing field of corporate governance: (1) the Delaware Chancery Court’s ruling this month on the use of a two-tier poison pill in the Sotheby’s case (and Sotheby’s quick and conciliatory settlement two days later, …
Cybersecurity has increasingly become a critical issue for all types of businesses, few more so than broker-dealers, investment advisers and others in the financial sector. The cyber threat is much broader than customer data privacy as addressed by the Securities …
On March 10, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced that issuers and underwriters of municipal securities may voluntarily report materially inaccurate statements made in offering documents regarding prior continuing disclosure compliance through a program called the Municipalities Continuing …
In recent years, one clause of the ISDA Master Agreement has been the source of a great deal of consternation among derivatives lawyers: the condition precedent set forth in Section 2(a)(iii), which purports to suspend a party’s payment obligations in …
On April 8, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) charged CVS Caremark Corp. (“CVS”) with violating the federal securities laws by failing to accurately disclose significant financial setbacks and overstating its financial performance through improper accounting.[1] CVS, which has …
The Pershing Square-Valeant hostile bid for Allergan has captured the imagination. Other companies are wondering whether they too will wake up one morning to find a raider-activist tag-team wielding a stealth block of their stock. Serial acquirers are asking whether …