The federal board charged with overseeing Puerto Rico’s financial overhaul and addressing its debt crisis was unconstitutionally appointed and must either be confirmed by the U.S. Senate or replaced in accordance with the law within the next 90 days, the First Circuit ruled Friday.
Creditors of Sears Holding Corp. were given the green light on Friday to investigate the bankrupt retailer's sale of $900 million in intercompany debt to a major lender, with a New York bankruptcy court approving requests to issue a slew of subpoenas and conduct discovery.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit on Friday against four individuals and businesses in their control for allegedly conducting a pair of elaborate fraud schemes in which fake debt notes for microcap companies were converted into stock and then sold to the public at a profit.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is encouraging companies to reveal more about how they consider diversity when composing their boards of directors, a move that could shed more light on a topic that Congress and certain large shareholders are increasingly scrutinizing.
The Second Circuit on Friday revived U.S. Bank's New York federal court suit seeking to make Bank of America buy back a $9 million mortgage loan from a commercial mortgage-backed securities trust, ruling that the case shouldn't be sent back to where it began in Indiana but should be decided under Hoosier state law.
Wall Street regulators fared well in Friday’s spending package, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission securing its first budget increase in four years and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission receiving tens of millions of dollars more than it bargained for, including cash to relocate in Manhattan.
Radian Group Inc. reportedly held unsuccessful deal talks, Thomas Cook Group PLC is mulling a sale of its airline unit, and Tokyo Commodity Exchange and the owner of the Tokyo Stock Exchange have agreed to merge.
An Illinois man claims Molson Coors Brewing Co. artificially inflated its stock price by misstating its tax liability by almost $248 million in documents filed during 2017 and 2018, and filed a class action Friday in Colorado federal court.
Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managing director Roger Ng Chong Hwa has agreed to be extradited from Malaysia to the U.S. to face charges of conspiring to misappropriate more than $2.7 billion from Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad.
Venture capital-backed Stealth BioTherapeutics Inc. made its debut on the market Friday, one day after picking up $78 million in an initial public offering priced at the low end of the WilmerHale-led biotechnology company’s range.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, will seek to tackle the state’s mammoth pension liabilities by switching to a graduated income tax regime, selling state assets and issuing pension bonds, one of his deputy governors has announced.
The New York Stock Exchange LLC and Nasdaq Stock Market LLC have separately asked the D.C. Circuit to review the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s two-year pilot program that could cap the fees they receive.
The federally appointed board overseeing Puerto Rico's financial overhaul announced Thursday that it has filed a complaint to compel the production of documents from the territory's Senate to get a fuller understanding of the island government's bank account balances.
President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency told senators Thursday that he hasn't seen what the administration is planning as far as reforming the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but wouldn't himself seek to cut government support for the 30-year mortgage if confirmed.
A California federal judge who was initially unpersuaded by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's arguments that an allegedly fraudulent initial coin offering involved securities changed his mind Thursday.
Two venture-backed health care-related companies saw shares begin trading to mixed results on Thursday after pricing initial public offerings that raised a combined $145 million, marking the latest companies to go public amid a sluggish start for IPOs this year.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission told a New York federal court on Wednesday to reject EOX Holdings' request to transfer an insider trading suit to Texas, arguing that a change would not provide more convenient access to documents or witnesses regarding the alleged mishandling of private information about block trades.
Following scrutiny by the D.C. Circuit, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday rescinded its approval of a capital plan filed by Options Clearing Corp. that critics said would hand exchanges that own the clearinghouse millions of dollars.
Multiple suitors have reportedly expressed interest in Nestle’s roughly $7 billion skin health business, Apollo is in talks to ink multiple transactions that would add to its portfolio more than 40 local TV stations across the U.S., and a Japanese jewelry company could be worth upward of $200 million in an IPO.
Gene-editing company Cibus Global Ltd. cited market conditions in postponing its initial public offering Thursday, becoming the third company this week to pull IPO plans shortly before a scheduled pricing date.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control recently amended the general licenses that authorize dealings in bonds and securities otherwise prohibited by U.S. sanctions on Venezuela — apparently to target parties that would facilitate transactions between Petróleos de Venezuela SA securities holders and blocked individuals, say attorneys at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP.
Competing U.S. equity exchanges attract liquidity by offering rebates to orders that make liquidity, and charging fees to orders that take liquidity, which may distort brokers’ incentives against their fiduciary duty. Such maker-taker fees are likely to attract further scrutiny from regulators and courts, say Ilan Guedj and Zhong Zhang of Bates White LLC.
Although the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has removed some roadblocks to capital formation, it has not taken a fresh look at special purpose acquisition companies in over a decade — leaving operating companies that go public by merging with SPACs saddled with unnecessary restrictions, says Carol Anne Huff of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
Recent case law reveals that courts vary widely in their approaches to shifting the costs and fees incurred in responding to a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 subpoena. Nonparties responding to such requests should consider certain district court trends, say attorneys at Pepper Hamilton LLP.
Series
"Echo of Its Time" is the story of Nebraska’s federal district court from statehood in 1867 to the demise of Prohibition in 1933. Professors John Wunder and Mark Scherer have written an objective, unsentimental and insightful history, layered with context and rich in character study, says U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp of the District of Nebraska.
The number of securities class action filings has remained high over the last year, and this trend is likely to continue, particularly if the markets remain volatile. But the good news for corporate America is that the number of dismissals also appears to be increasing, say attorneys at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.
The Momentive decision in the Southern District of New York, which warned against allowing senior secured creditors to “completely disable debtors from restructuring” and “scavenge on all assets in bird’s-eye view,” may have the unintended consequence of doing just that, say Adam Shiff and Shai Schmidt of Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP.
Lawyers involved in a mass tort must make difficult decisions concerning the potential size of the claimant pool, the expected percentage of qualifying cases, the likelihood of a settlement and more. Data analytics can help guide mass tort strategies and yield better outcomes, say Deb Zonies and Mark Zabel of litigation support services provider Verus LLC.
Guest Feature
Anthony Scaramucci is probably best known for the 11 days he spent as White House director of communications in 2017. But when White and Williams LLP attorney Randy Maniloff sat down to chat with "the Mooch," he was interested in hearing a different story.
Paul Manafort's attorneys recently filed a court document containing incompletely redacted information, highlighting the need for attorneys to become competent at redaction — or at least at verifying that redaction has been performed correctly. Failure to do either could be construed as legal malpractice, says Byeongsook Seo of Snell & Wilmer LLP.