Charles Schwab Making $660M Push Into Private Markets

By Al Barbarino

The Charles Schwab Corp. said Thursday it has agreed to acquire Forge Global Holdings Inc. in a transaction valued at approximately $660 million, in a deal guided by three firms that marks the financial services company's latest effort to dive deeper into private markets. 

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Pair Of Health-Focused Startups Net $423M In Combined IPOs

By Rae Ann Varona

Two startups, spanning the diagnostics and biotechnology sectors, began trading on Thursday after raising a combined $423 million in initial public offerings, guided by three law firms, as more companies continue going public despite a historic government shutdown that has reduced staffing at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

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White & Case Leads Restructured Mexican Airline's $223M IPO

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Mexican airline Aeroméxico began trading publicly on Thursday after raising $223 million in its initial public offering, also announcing that it had raised an additional $25 million in a private placement.

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AI-Powered Parking Lot Startup Metropolis Raises $1.6B

By Jade Martinez-Pogue

Parking payments artificial intelligence company Metropolis Technologies Inc. on Thursday revealed that it reached a $5 billion valuation after raising $1.6 billion of debt and equity fundraising.

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Treasury Hears Banks, Crypto Orgs Spar Over Stablecoin Yield

By Aislinn Keely

A U.S. Treasury Department proposal on how stablecoins should be regulated has sparked a clash between banking groups and crypto advocates over whether issuers and others should be allowed to offer interest on the tokens, with banks and consumer watchdogs warning the activity could create unnecessary risks.

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Samourai Wallet Exec Gets 5 Years In Crypto Laundering Case

By Pete Brush

A Manhattan federal judge sentenced the CEO of crypto mixer Samourai Wallet to five years in prison Thursday after he admitted that his business facilitated big-dollar transfers derived from criminal activity including narcotics trafficking and extortion.

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Core Scientific Reaches $14.75M Deal With SPAC Investors

By Emilie Ruscoe

Bankrupt cryptocurrency miner Core Scientific has reached a $14.75 million agreement to settle proposed class action claims brought by an investor in the special purpose acquisition company that made a $4.3 billion deal to bring the miner public via merger.

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Six Flags Faces Investor Suit Over Troubled Turnaround Bid

By Emilie Ruscoe

Amusement park giant Six Flags Entertainment Corp. faces a proposed investor class action alleging the company failed to effectively capitalize on its 2024 merger with another theme park operator, precipitating a "catastrophic" earnings miss in August.

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6th Circ. Won't Rethink FirstEnergy Bribe Probe Docs Ruling

By Jessica Corso

The Sixth Circuit said Thursday it would not reconsider a ruling blocking FirstEnergy investors from accessing documents prepared by BigLaw firms investigating the company's $1 billion bribery scandal, and clarified that the decision also applies to depositions taken in the proposed class action.

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SD Judge DQs Counsel, Denies Early Win In $1M Fraud Suit

By Emily Sawicki

A South Dakota federal judge has disqualified a Miami attorney from defending an investment adviser in a $1 million fraud suit, finding the lawyer is likely to be a key witness in the case, on the same day she issued a separate order denying the adviser an early win on summary judgment.

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Atty Exits Bankruptcy Case Amid Judge Romance Fallout

By Emily Sawicki

The embattled wind-down trustee for defunct life insurance bond seller GWG Holdings in a Houston Chapter 11 case has resigned from the role amid the fallout from her secret romance with a then-bankruptcy judge in the Southern District of Texas.

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Deals Rumor Mill

Pfizer Matches Novo's $10B Metsera Bid, And Other Rumors

By Al Barbarino

Pfizer Inc. reportedly raised its offer for Metsera Inc. to match a $10 billion bid from Novo Nordisk Inc., as a bidding war and legal squabble play out between the drugmakers. Among other deal-related rumors, Apollo Global Management Inc. reportedly dropped its bid to take private pizza chain Papa Johns International Inc., and new developments emerged as Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. weighs potential sale options.

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Ex-Goodwin Financial Services Leader Jumps To Covington

By James Boyle

A former Goodwin Procter LLP attorney with more than 20 years of experience advising clients on mergers and acquisitions and capital markets transactions has joined Covington & Burling LLP's Boston office as a partner and co-chair of the firm's financial services practice.

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Questions To Ask Your Client When Fraud Taints Financing

As elevated risk levels yield fertile conditions for fraud in financing transactions, asking corporate clients the right investigative questions can help create an action plan, bring parties together and help clients successfully survive any scam, says Mark Kirsons at Morgan Lewis.

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Series

Mindfulness Meditation Makes Me A Better Lawyer

Mindful meditation enables me to drop the ego, and in helping me to keep sight of what’s important, permits me to learn from the other side and become a reliable counselor, says Roy Wyman at Bass Berry.

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Delaware Fee Inflation Worries Overblown, Study Says

By Jeff Montgomery

A newly published report by two Stanford University researchers asserts that high-dollar attorney fee awards in Delaware courts make up "a very small minority of cases" and are "no basis for concern," throwing cold water on growing worries about so-called fee inflation in the First State.

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'It's A War, Man': Trump's Deputy AG Unloads On Judges, Bars

By Jeff Overley

The U.S. Department of Justice is in "a war" with federal judges who are "not following the law," and it is separately formulating plans to block "activist, obnoxious" bar associations from assessing ethics complaints against government lawyers, a top DOJ official said Friday.

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Jeffer Mangels Hit With Pregnancy Bias Suit By Ex-Associate

By Hailey Konnath

A former Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP associate has accused the firm of discriminating against women, especially pregnant women, claiming that she was harassed throughout her pregnancy and eventually fired after she advocated for herself and pointed out the disparate treatment.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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Ex-Calif. Judge Seeks To Toss Sex Assault, Coverup Charges

By Craig Clough

A former California state judge on Friday moved to toss federal criminal charges alleging that he sexually assaulted a court employee and lied to investigators, saying the employee was not under his direct supervision so he could not have been acting under the "color of law" when the alleged assault occurred.

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Ex-Polsinelli Atty Agrees To Dismiss Sexual Harassment Case

By Hailey Konnath

A former Polsinelli PC equity shareholder agreed to drop her suit alleging two former partners sexually harassed her, and she was fired after reporting it, according to a notice filed Friday in Washington, D.C., federal court.

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Mass. Federal Judge Mark Wolf Retires After 40 Years

By Chris Villani

Senior U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf on Friday announced that he is retiring after more than 40 years on the federal bench, having presided over some of the most notable cases in Massachusetts federal court over the past four decades.

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Hearing Officer Clears Mass. Judge Of Aiding ICE Escape

By Julie Manganis

A hearing officer has concluded that Massachusetts state court Justice Shelley Richmond Joseph was not aware of a plan to allow a defendant to evade an ICE agent waiting at a suburban Boston court in 2018, but is recommending a public reprimand for other actions the judge took that day.

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Roundup

UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Max Austin

This past week in London has seen Big Technologies file fresh claims against its ousted chief executive, West Ham United FC sue Arthur J. Gallagher Insurance for breach of duty, and RSM UK face a new claim over a company's administration. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K. 

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Del. Federal Court Won't Keep Trump's Interim US Atty In Role

By Jack Karp

Delaware's federal court will not appoint the district's current interim U.S. attorney and President Donald Trump's choice for that position to remain in the role, according to a notice from the district's chief judge.

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DOJ Backs Trump In NY False-Records Conviction Appeal

By Emily Sawicki

The U.S. Department of Justice is throwing its support behind President Donald Trump's effort to overturn his New York criminal conviction for falsifying business records, filing a proposed amicus brief on Friday citing the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2024 decision "defining the contours of a president's federal constitutional immunity from criminal prosecution."

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Brief

Pension Corp. Installs EEOC Ex-Chair Dhillon As Director

By Kellie Mejdrich

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. swore in former U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chair and commissioner Janet Dhillon as the 17th director of the federal agency, which runs two insurance programs backstopping the nation's single and multiemployer defined-benefit pension plans.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

The federal judge overseeing Epic Games' antitrust suit against Google Inc. has doubts about their settlement deal and is asking for more evidence. And a Black McDonald's executive, who claimed he was fired for confronting his CEO over a racial comment, has lost his bias suit. These are some of the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Latham & Watkins LLP and Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart PC lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Eighth Circuit vacated a National Labor Relations Board ruling that Home Depot illegally forced out a worker who showed support for Black Lives Matter.

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Shutdown, Funding Crisis Leave Federal Defenders Unpaid

By Courtney Bublé

The record-long government shutdown has hindered an already dire funding situation for the federal defense community, but now the judiciary is working on requests to Congress to alleviate that.

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Analysis

How One Law Firm Got Two Big White-Collar Wins In 48 Hours

By Phillip Bantz

The white-collar team at Dykema Gossett PLLC secured back-to-back dismissals of two criminal cases in as many days last month by challenging the government's experts, flagging discovery issues and hammering on other perceived weaknesses in the prosecutions.

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