Capital Markets

  • June 20, 2025

    Many Foreign Firms Could Face Stricter Access To US Markets

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's reevaluation of the definition of a foreign private issuer could have far-reaching consequences, potentially tightening access to U.S. markets for companies based in China and beyond, lawyers say.

  • June 20, 2025

    Trump Inks Rollback Of Biden-Era OCC Bank Merger Rule

    President Donald Trump on Friday signed legislation nullifying the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's Biden-era bank merger rule, clinching a Republican campaign to overturn what industry groups criticized as an overly restrictive and unclear framework for reviewing proposed transactions.

  • June 20, 2025

    8th Circ. Sends SEC's $12M Dealer Suit Back To District Court

    The Eighth Circuit on Friday granted a request from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to remand a $12 million unregistered dealer judgment the agency won against financial firm Carebourn Capital LP back to the district court, despite Carebourn's bid to keep the matter in the federal appeals court.

  • June 20, 2025

    Senate's CFPB, PCAOB Cuts Hit Parliamentarian Roadblock

    The U.S. Senate parliamentarian has thrown cold water on the Senate Banking Committee's bids to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and eliminate the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board as part of the "One Big Beautiful" budget megabill, but the panel's top Republican is vowing to keep seeking further spending cuts.

  • June 20, 2025

    Apple Hit With Securities Suit Over IPhone AI Feature Delays

    An Apple investor hit the tech giant and its top brass with a proposed securities class action in California federal court Friday, alleging they duped investors into believing Apple would launch new artificial intelligence Siri features on the iPhone 16 and caused Apple stock to tumble after the rollout was delayed repeatedly.

  • June 20, 2025

    SEC Weighs Settlement After 1st Circ. Pulls $93M Win

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has entered settlement negotiations with Massachusetts-based financial firm Commonwealth Financial Network, two months after the First Circuit nixed the agency's $93 million win against the company, according to a court document filed Friday.

  • June 20, 2025

    SEC Axes 3 More Dealer Suits In Continued Policy Shift

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has voluntarily dismissed three lawsuits accusing a hedge fund and two penny stock traders of operating as unregistered securities dealers, continuing the new Republican leadership's shift away from pursuing cases that defendants argued unlawfully expanded agency oversight.

  • June 20, 2025

    NJ Tech Co. Brass Face Suit Over NASA Partnership Claims

    Executives and directors of Quantum Computing Inc. have been hit with a shareholder's derivative lawsuit accusing them of misleading investors on the company's dealings with NASA, its revenues and its progress on building a chip foundry.

  • June 20, 2025

    4 ERISA Cases To Watch In The 2nd Half Of 2025

    The U.S. Department of Labor's challenge to a pair of injunctions blocking Biden-era regulations that broaden who qualifies as an investment advice fiduciary under federal benefits law tops the list of cases benefits attorneys will be watching in the latter half of the year.

  • June 18, 2025

    US Seizes $225M In Crypto Tied To 'Pig Butchering' Schemes

    Law enforcement on Wednesday asked a Washington, D.C., federal judge to help it return more than $225.3 million worth of stolen digital assets to victims of phony crypto investment schemes, including to a small Kansas bank that failed after its CEO got entangled in a so-called pig butchering scheme, as part of what the U.S. Department of Justice called its largest ever seizure connected with such scams.

  • June 18, 2025

    Dealmakers Eye More Crypto-Targeted SPAC Mergers

    More special purpose acquisition companies plan to seize upon the revival of cryptocurrencies under a second Trump administration and take cryptocurrency-related ventures public in the coming months, an attorney told a gathering of dealmakers on Wednesday.

  • June 18, 2025

    Google's $32B Wiz Bid Gets DOJ Scrutiny, And Other Rumors

    The U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing Google’s $32 billion Wiz deal, Mitsubishi could pay $8 billion for Aethon Energy's assets, and hedge fund Millennium could fetch a $14 billion valuation with a minority stake sale. Here’s a breakdown of the notable deal rumors from the past week.

  • June 18, 2025

    Former Holland & Knight Partner Joins Husch Blackwell

    Husch Blackwell has announced that former Holland & Knight LLP partner Bruce Toppin has joined the Kansas City, Missouri-headquartered law firm as a partner in its financial services and capital markets industry group.

  • June 18, 2025

    AGs Tell 3rd Circ. To Close 'Loophole' In Kalshi Betting Case

    A bipartisan group of attorneys general co-led by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, pressed the Third Circuit to prevent trading platform Kalshi's "broad preemptive coup," urging the appellate court to allow New Jersey to regulate the company.

  • June 18, 2025

    InnovAge IPO Investors Get Initial OK Of $27M Settlement

    A Colorado federal judge has preliminarily approved a $27 million settlement between InnovAge Holding Corp., its underwriters and a class of stockholders accusing the senior-health care company of making misleading statements in an initial public offering that later caused stock prices to tank after a government audit exposed the falsehoods.

  • June 18, 2025

    Squire Patton Adds Polsinelli Trio To New Private Credit Group

    Squire Patton Boggs has added a three-lawyer team from Polsinelli PC to its private credit and direct lending practice group.

  • June 17, 2025

    Protego Takes $200M Crypto Bank Suit To Wash. Court

    Protego Holdings Corp. has re-launched a lawsuit in Washington state court blaming a Texas investment firm for failing to carry out a $200 million investment pledge in its launch of a cryptocurrency bank, which never materialized because rare conditional approval from the U.S. government lapsed over financing concerns.

  • June 17, 2025

    Cancer Diagnostics Firm, Insurer Price 2 IPOs Totaling $902M

    Cancer-diagnostics test provider Caris Life Sciences Inc. and coastal-focused residential insurer Slide Insurance Holdings Inc. will begin trading Wednesday after pricing two initial public offerings that raised a combined $902 million, guided by five law firms.

  • June 17, 2025

    Senate Passes Stablecoin Legislation With Bipartisan Support

    The Senate's proposal to regulate stablecoins passed the chamber on Tuesday with support from both parties, sending it on to the House where lawmakers are still working on their own proposal.

  • June 17, 2025

    Crypto Co. Says Meme-Coin Creating Atty Can't Rep Theft Suit

    Cryptocurrency wallet provider Phantom Technologies has asked a New York federal judge to disqualify an attorney from representing a group of plaintiffs, including himself, in a suit he filed over the alleged theft of half-a-million dollars worth of a meme coin he created in honor of his pet dachshund.

  • June 17, 2025

    Utah Man Can't Escape SEC's Microcap Stock Scheme Suit

    A Utah bookkeeper can't escape U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allegations he served as a middleman in a penny stock pump-and-dump scheme because the SEC's complaint appropriately details its assertion that he was, at least, reckless, in connection with the matter, a federal judge has determined.

  • June 17, 2025

    Beverage Co.'s Rihanna Rum Claims Were Bunk, SEC Says

    A purported beverage company and its founder face Securities and Exchange Commission claims they defrauded would-be investors out of $3.6 million by misrepresenting how they aimed to use funds they raised and inaccurately suggesting the company was poised to collaborate with pop star Rihanna.

  • June 17, 2025

    Venezuela Oil Co. PDVSA Must Face $258M Default Ruling

    Spanish company Elecnor SA has achieved a green light from a New York state judge to pursue enforcement of a nearly $258 million default judgment against Venezuela's state-owned oil and natural gas company over unpaid debt.

  • June 17, 2025

    Del. Justices Undo $200M Award In TransCanada Case

    Pointing in part to an earlier appellate ruling, Delaware's highest court on Tuesday reversed a Court of Chancery decision that ordered the former TransCanada Corp. to pay $199 million to former Columbia Pipeline Group Inc. shareholders allegedly shorted in a 2016 merger.

  • June 17, 2025

    Canadian Banks Decry BioPharma's 'Abusive' Spoofing Suit

    The brokerage arms of the Royal Bank of Canada and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce are fighting a lawsuit accusing them of spoofing the stock of a biopharmaceutical company, arguing that the "abusive litigation" does not belong in a U.S. courtroom.

Expert Analysis

  • Despite SEC Climate Pause, Cos. Must Still Heed State Regs

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    While businesses may have been given a reprieve from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's rules aimed at standardizing climate-related disclosures, they must still track evolving requirements in states including California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York that will soon require reporting of direct and indirect carbon emissions, say attorneys at Husch Blackwell.

  • A Primer On The Trading And Clearing Of Perpetual Contracts

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    The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently released a request for comment on the trading and clearing of perpetual-style derivatives, most common in the cryptocurrency market, necessitating a deep look at how these contracts operate and their associated risks, say attorneys at Moore & Van Allen.

  • Series

    Teaching College Students Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Serving as an adjunct college professor has taught me the importance of building rapport, communicating effectively, and persuading individuals to critically analyze the difference between what they think and what they know — principles that have helped to improve my practice of law, says Sheria Clarke at Nelson Mullins.

  • Crunching The Numbers Of Trump SEC's 1st 100 Days

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    During the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought significantly fewer stand-alone enforcement actions than at the beginning of the Biden and the first Trump administrations, with every one of the federal court complaints including allegations of fraudulent conduct, say attorneys at Dentons.

  • Series

    Adapting To Private Practice: From DOJ Enviro To Mid-Law

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    Practitioners leaving a longtime government role for private practice — as when I departed the U.S. Department of Justice’s environmental enforcement division — should prioritize finding a firm that shares their principles, values their experience and will invest in their transition, says John Cruden at Beveridge & Diamond.

  • A Look At Probabilistic Tracing After High Court's Slack Ruling

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    Recent decisions following the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Slack v. Pirani have increased the difficulty of pleading Securities Act claims for securities issued in direct listings by rejecting the use of statistical probabilities to establish that share purchases were traceable to a challenged registration statement, says Jonathan Richman at Brown Rudnick.

  • FDIC Rules Rollback Foretells More Pro-Industry Changes

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    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s March withdrawal of Biden-era proposals to tighten brokered deposit rules and impose new corporate governance standards shows that acting chair Travis Hill’s commitment to reviewing regulations that may restrict growth and innovation for financial institution and fintech companies is unlikely to flag soon, say attorneys at Cooley.

  • NY Tax Talk: Sourcing, Retroactivity, Information Services

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    Attorneys at Eversheds Sutherland examine recent decisions by New York’s Tax Appeals Tribunal, Division of Taxation and Court of Appeals on location sourcing of broker-dealer receipts, a case of first impression on the retroactive application of Corporate Franchise Tax regulations and when fees for information services are excluded from taxation.

  • DOJ Memo Maps Out A Lighter Touch For Digital Assets

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    A recent memo issued by the Justice Department signals a less aggressive approach toward the digital asset industry, with notable directives including disbandment of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, a higher evidentiary bar for unlicensed money transmitting, and prosecutions of individuals rather than platforms, say attorneys at Cleary.

  • SEC Update May Ease Accredited Investor Status Verification

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently opened a new avenue to verifying accredited investor status, which could encourage more private fund sponsors and other issuers to engage in a general solicitation with less fear that they will lose the offering's exemption from registration under the Securities Act, say attorneys at Simpson Thacher.

  • Legal Ethics Considerations For Law Firm Pro Bono Deals

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    If a law firm enters into a pro bono deal with the Trump administration in exchange for avoiding or removing an executive order, it has an ethical obligation to create a written settlement agreement with specific terms, which would mitigate some potential conflict of interest problems, says Andrew Altschul at Buchanan Angeli.

  • Series

    Playing Football Made Me A Better Lawyer

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    While my football career ended over 15 years ago, the lessons the sport taught me about grit, accountability and resilience have stayed with me and will continue to help me succeed as an attorney, says Bert McBride at Trenam.

  • 10 Arbitrations And A 5th Circ. Ruling Flag Arb. Clause Risks

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    The ongoing arbitral saga of Sullivan v. Feldman, which has engendered proceedings before 10 different arbitrators in Texas and Louisiana along with last month's Fifth Circuit opinion, showcases both the risks and limitations of arbitration clauses in retainer agreements for resolving attorney-client disputes, says Christopher Blazejewski at Sherin and Lodgen.

  • The SEC's Administrative Law Courts Are At A Crossroads

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    The U.S. Department of Justice's recent departure from its prior defense of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's administrative law judges' legitimacy moves the forum deeper into a constitutional limbo that likely requires congressional action, says Dean Conway at Carlton Fields.

  • SEC's Noteworthy Stablecoin Guidance Comes With Caveats

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently issued a statement concluding that a narrow class of stablecoins doesn't involve the offer or sale of securities — a significant step forward in recognizing that not all crypto-assets are created equal, though there remains a pressing need for broader regulatory clarity, say attorneys at A&O Shearman.

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