Uncategorized

The Efficacy of PCAOB Operational Decision Making

By James J. Blann, Tyler J. Kleppe and Jonathan E. Shipman May 11, 2021 by renholding

The operating budget of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has grown significantly since the regulator’s inception, with the total annual resources consumed by the PCAOB almost doubling—from $127 million to $252 million—between 2006 and 2018 (PCAOB 2007, 2019). …

How Open Banking May Affect the Legality of Screen Scraping

By Han-Wei Liu May 7, 2021 by renholding

Screen scraping – the technique of automatically collecting, parsing, and organizing data from the web – has over the past two decades been used for everything from targeted advertising to price aggregation to academic research. It can, however, be detrimental …

Sullivan & Cromwell Discusses Decision Curtailing FTC Ability to Obtain Monetary Relief

By Alexander J. Willscher, Juddson O. Littleton, Samuel R. Woodall III, Stephen H. Meyer and Jennifer L. Sutton April 28, 2021 by renholding

On April 22, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court held in AMG Capital Management, LLC v. Federal Trade Commission[1] that Section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act does not give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to seek (or …

Patterson Belknap Discusses State Data-Privacy Laws and Potential Federal Legislation

By Andrew M. Willinger and Peter A. Nelson April 20, 2021 by Nisha Chandra

With a dizzying array of state privacy laws on the horizon, the prospect of a federal solution has come into sharp focus.  Rather than a patchwork of regional legislation, a comprehensive national framework would potentially govern the precautions that companies …

The Banker Removal Power

By Da Lin and Lev Menand April 7, 2021 by renholding

The Federal Reserve can, under 12 U.S.C. § 1818(e), remove bankers from office if they violate the law, engage in unsafe or unsound practices, or breach their fiduciary duties. Yet the Fed has used this power so rarely that few …

A COVID-19 Quandary: Does a Force Majeure Clause Displace the Frustration Doctrine?

By Andrew A. Schwartz April 5, 2021 by renholding

The frustration (or “frustration of purpose”) doctrine excuses a party from its contractual obligations when an extraordinary event completely undermines its principal purpose in making the deal. Historically, the doctrine has played a marginal role in contract law, as parties …

Discretionary Decision-Making and the S&P 500 Index

By Bernard S. Sharfman and Vincent Deluard March 30, 2021 by renholding

Discretion is an integral part of how indices, including stock market indices, are constituted, according to professors Rauterberg and Verstein and Robertson (here and here), and the S&P 500 index is no exception.

The S&P 500 is a …

ESG Investing After the New Labor Department Rule on “Financial Factors”

By Max M. Schanzenbach and Robert H. Sitkoff March 29, 2021 by renholding

In the wake of the U.S. Department of Labor’s new rule on “Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments,” adopted last November and effective as of January 12, 2021, some ERISA fiduciaries and their advisers have expressed concern about the permissibility …

Latham & Watkins Discusses Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act

By Jennifer C. Archie, Michael H. Rubin, Marissa R. Boynton and Alexander L. Stout March 16, 2021 by snehapandya

On March 2, 2021, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed comprehensive state privacy legislation titled the Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA). Previously, the Virginia Senate unanimously passed the bill on February 5, 2021, and the Virginia House of Delegates followed suit …

Patterson Belknap Discusses Consumer Data Privacy in New York

By Christina Seda-Acosta and Alejandro H. Cruz March 10, 2021 by Nisha Chandra

As the national landscape of data privacy laws evolves, New York may be poised to follow California in passing legislation that creates new data rights for New York consumers.  New York is no stranger to this field.  The New York …

Distinguishing Social Enterprise Lawyering

By Alina Ball March 5, 2021 by renholding

The rise of for-profit, mission-driven (“hybrid”) entities has prompted legal scholarship on corporate law innovations and governance considerations in the social enterprise context. A consistent theme of this scholarship is skepticism of whether these hybrid entities create value, given the …

Ropes & Gray Discusses President Biden’s Buy American Executive Order

By John P. Bueker, Thomas N. Bulleit, Joshua S. Levy, Kirsten Mayer and Michael R. Littenberg March 2, 2021 by snehapandya

On January 25th, 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14005, entitled “Ensuring the Future Is Made in All of America by All of America’s Workers,” (“EO”), aimed at increasing the federal government’s procurement of American-made supplies. This EO has …

Why Some Covid-19 Mitigation Strategies Fail

By Jan-Philip Elm and Roee Sarel February 19, 2021 by renholding

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the global economy, regulators are struggling to find cost-effective mitigation strategies. The goal of such strategies should be simple: Reduce the spread of the virus, while causing the least amount of damage to …

Acting FTC Chair Slaughter Speaks on Protecting Privacy and Data Security

By Rebecca Kelly Slaughter February 16, 2021 by snehapandya

Thank you for inviting me to speak with you all today. The President named me as Acting Chair just a few weeks ago, and I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity to lead the FTC in these challenging times. It is …

Paul Hastings Discusses Proposed Cyber Incident Reporting Rule for Banks

By Behnam Dayanim, Jackie Cooney and Daniel Julian January 25, 2021 by Nisha Chandra

Federal financial regulatory agencies, including the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”), and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) (collectively, the “Regulators”), issued on December 18, 2020, a Notice …

Fried Frank Discusses the New Paycheck Protection Program

By Gail Weinstein, Michael T. Gershberg, Libin Zhang, David L. Shaw and Randi Lally January 6, 2021 by renholding

On December 27, 2020, the Economic Aid Act (EAA) was signed into law to provide financial relief to small businesses suffering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The EAA amends the PPP loan program that was established earlier this …

Funding Crises: An Empirical Study of the Paycheck Protection Program

By William A. Birdthistle and Joshua Silver December 15, 2020 by renholding

Soon after the coronavirus pandemic erupted in the spring, Congress enacted the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (“CARES”) Act, pumping $2.2 trillion into the economy. Now, nine months later, many of that law’s critical elements have ended or will …

A Tale of Two Enforcement Venues: Why the SEC’s Choice of Where to File Cases Matters

By Xin Zheng December 11, 2020 by renholding

The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 allows the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to bring enforcement actions and impose civil penalties in administrative proceedings as alternatives to federal district courts. Some argue that this gives the SEC a “home-court” advantage. For …

Gibson Dunn Discusses Consumer Protection Under the Biden Administration

By Alexander Southwell, Ryan Bergsieker and Sarah Erickson December 1, 2020 by renholding

President-elect Biden has signaled that robust consumer protections will be a major focus of his policy agenda in what is anticipated to be a dramatic shift from the deregulatory policies of the Trump administration.  In this article, we preview the …

Financial Regulators Offer Update on Audit Quality in Emerging Markets

By Jay Clayton, Sagar Teotia and William D. Duhnke III November 25, 2020 by renholding

Over the past several years, the exposure of U.S. investors and our capital markets to companies with significant operations in emerging markets, including China, has increased.[1] This increased exposure carries with it a number of significant risks and challenges,

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