Here is the weekly summary for Securities Docket’s Web Watch (”This Week’s Best Blog Posts and Columns”):
Beware of What You Say to Counsel Representing a Corporation (White Collar Crime Prof Blog)
White Collar Crime Prof Blog | October 1, 2009
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in United States v. Ruehle,a case that opens by saying “[w]e here explore the treacherous path which corporate counsel must tread under the attorney client privilege when conducting an internal investigation to advise a publicly traded company on its financial disclosure obligations.”
Giving the SEC Teeth (Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture)
The Big Picture | September 30, 2009
How hard was it for the Inspector General of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), H. David Kotz to find items to critique? I am sure the two reports outlining 58 steps to improve the agency’s enforcement and inspections units are perfectly adequate. But the question I want to pose is this: Do they address a decade of neglect?
Spongetech Is All Wet (Roddy Boyd, The Big Money)
The Big Money | September 30, 2009
To a certain sort of capital markets observer, Spongetech is something else, not seen in a long while: a full-bore pump-and-dump scheme that will, when all is said and done, likely have harvested the wallets of thousands of penny-stock speculators and earnest individual investors who thought they had found the proverbial “next thing.”
Marc Dreier’s Crime of Destiny (Bryan Burrough, Vanity Fair)
Vanity Fair | September 29, 2009
What no one understood is that everything Dreier owned-the cars, the mansions, the yacht, the sushi restaurant, even the law firm itself-was made possible by his crimes. This was a man who went bad to have everything.
Reforming the SEC: The Humbling of a Proud Agency (theRacetotheBottom)
theRacetotheBottom | September 28, 2009
Like all agencies, even the SEC can succumb to a creeping inertia and sense of ossification, relying on practices not because they are the best but because they are comfortable.
Will the tycoons DO TIME? (Kevin Hall, McClatchy Newspapers)
McClatchy Newspapers | September 27, 2009
There are plenty of civil and class-action lawsuits from aggrieved investors angered by the losses in their mortgage bonds, hedge funds or pensions. Regulators have stepped up their vigilance after the fact. But to date, no captain of finance tied to the crisis has walked the plank.
