Well-known plaintiffs’ lawyer Gene Cauley has agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of criminal contempt for “failing to safely hold” $9.3 million in settlement money he was holding for clients. The WSJ Law Blog reports that in an Arkansas Supreme Court filing Cauley made on May 9, he stated that was also giving…
There were rumblings near the end of 2008 that the SEC’s interest in options backdating was winding down, but the last few days have seen a new surge in such cases. On May 14, the SEC filed a settled backdating enforcement action against Gary A. Ray, the former VP of human resources at L.A.-based homebuilder KB Home, Inc. Today, the…
The high-profile insider trading case in Hong Kong against former Morgan Stanley managing director Du Jun took an unexpected turn today when it emerged that Morgan Stanley compliance officers approved the trades of Du Jun at issue due to confusion as to the name of the security involved. The FT reports that in February 2007, Samantha Ng, a former Morgan…
In a hotly-contested case that has been discussed here in several posts, The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider a constitutional challenge to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the auditing industry’s watchdog. The Supreme Court stated today that it will hear arguments that the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act that created the PCAOB violates the constitutional provision giving the president…
The SEC announced on Friday that it has commenced a $267 million Fair Fund distribution to mutual funds and mutual fund shareholders who were harmed by late trading and market timing that occurred through Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns was charged by the SEC in a 2006 enforcement action. Friday’s disbursement of more than $216 million went out to approximately 761,000…
Stanford’s court-appointed receiver seeks $20 million fee, FSA hires PwC to probe conduct of RBS bosses, federal judge rejects portion of WaMu shareholder lawsuit, and more.