While Coinbase’s decision to forgo its planned launch of Lend apparently avoids a head-on collision with the SEC, the events of the past month demonstrate both the SEC’s readiness to pursue enforcement action in the digital asset space as well as the crypto industry’s dissatisfaction with the guidance provided by the SEC regarding the ground rules for conducting digital business. …
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the Fed, said this week that he planned to introduce legislation barring senior Fed officials from owning shares of stock in individual companies. That ban should apply to Mr. Brown and his colleagues, too. It should apply to judges. It should apply to the executive…
Davis Polk today announced that veteran prosecutor and senior Department of Justice official Daniel Kahn will join the firm as a partner in the White Collar Defense & Investigations practice in Washington DC. He will focus on representing clients in criminal and regulatory investigations, as well as in civil and criminal trials. Source: Senior DOJ official Daniel Kahn to rejoin…
Cryptocurrency companies are ramping up hiring in their compliance departments as they come under increasing regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and world-wide. Hamlyn Williams Inc., a global recruiter that focuses on regulated industries, said it has conducted 18 chief-compliance-officer searches for financial technology and cryptocurrency businesses in 2021, up from seven searches for all of 2020. Source: Crypto Firms Beef…
No one is claiming to know if Filler or any of the other TipRanks stars are taking advantage of nonpublic information. Poker legend Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson made five final tables in his career, after all, and it’s possible to get lucky enough to flip a coin and hit heads a bunch of times in a row. Plus, insiders will…
Kirkland & Ellis is excited to announce that Nader Salehi, one of the nation’s top securities enforcement defense attorneys, has joined the Firm as a partner in the Government, Regulatory & Internal Investigations Practice Group in the Washington, D.C., office. Source: Kirkland & Ellis Adds Prominent SEC Enforcement Defense Attorney Nader Salehi to Investigations Team | News | Kirkland &…
In an interesting development, the U.S. District Court Judge overseeing the cybersecurity-related securities class action lawsuit pending against title insurance company First American Financial Corp. has granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss. The dismissal in the case is interesting because the company had in June 2021 agreed with the SEC to enter a cease-and-desist order and to pay a modest…
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it has barred two individuals from the SEC’s whistleblower award program, each of whom filed hundreds of frivolous award applications. The bars were issued pursuant to the 2020 amendments to the Whistleblower Program Rules, which were designed to allow the whistleblower program to operate more effectively and efficiently and to focus on…
According to the SEC’s order, WPP implemented an aggressive business growth strategy that included acquiring majority interests in many localized advertising agencies in high-risk markets. The order finds that WPP failed to ensure that these subsidiaries implemented WPP’s internal accounting controls and compliance policies, instead allowing the founders and CEOs of the acquired entities to exercise wide autonomy and outsized…
Coinbase has decided to halt its plans to launch an interest-earning product two weeks after CEO Brian Armstrong took the SEC to task on Twitter for its lack of guidance on the matter. The newly public cryptocurrency services firm said in an update on its blog Friday that it will not launch Coinbase Lend, which would allow users to earn…