Category: News

One of the key aspects of President Obama’s proposed Fiscal Year 2017 budget has been an early push for the budgets of Wall Street regulators to double over the next five years. If accepted without changes, the budget for the Securities and Exchange Commission would increase 11% to $1.8 billion and the Commodity Futures Trading...

The Wall Street Journal took aim at the CFTC whistleblower program this weekend, claiming that the agency has spent more than it has paid out since launching in 2011 and has not been able to get tips in the futures and swaps markets. While technically accurate, the criticism fails to consider the length of the entire process,...

This week, the SEC announced the resolution of its FCPA investigation into SAP and SciClone Pharmaceuticals announced its own resolution with the SEC. SciClone agreed to pay $12.8 million to resolve the investigation without admitting or denying wrongdoing. The DOJ declined to continue an investigation into the company as part of the resolution. Last year,...

In a speech this week, SEC Enforcement Chief Andrew Ceresney discussed the types of wrongdoing the SEC has seen over the past few years in financial disclosures and auditing. As the securities regulator has been winding down its prosecution of the financial crimes from the Great Recession, or lack thereof according to some, the SEC...

The CFTC has launched a new, separate website for its Dodd-Frank whistleblower program. Previously, individuals searching for information looked to the CFTC website which contained all of the information for reporting commodities fraud, including the rules, forms, notices of covered actions and award announcements. The new website hasn’t received major media attention yet. It was...

Last year, we speculated about the likelihood that the Supreme Court would accept a significant insider trading case at the urging of the Justice Department. Although the Supreme Court denied cert in United States v. Newman from the Second Circuit, the subject of the DOJ request a few months ago, it will now review an insider trading...

It has been a good week for consumers and employees as the Supreme Court protected the right to proceed with a class action and the Labor Department opened up new options for victims of wage theft.   The Supreme Court struck a blow to large corporations hoping to avoid class action lawsuits by rejecting the...

The SEC rewarded an industry expert with more than $700,000 after evaluating four whistleblower requests for a reward. In the press release concerning the award, the SEC encouraged other outsiders who do not work for the company but suspect violations of the federal securities laws to report them. Andrew Ceresney, Director of the SEC’s Enforcement...