The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced charges against five broker-dealers, seven dually registered broker-dealers and investment advisers, and four affiliated investment advisers for widespread and longstanding failures by the firms and their employees to maintain and preserve electronic communications. The firms admitted the facts set forth in their respective SEC orders, acknowledged that their conduct violated recordkeeping provisions of…
Payments from crypto-related ransom attacks nearly doubled to a record $1 billion in 2023, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said on Wednesday. Scammers targeting institutions such as hospitals, schools and government offices for ransom pocketed $1.1 billion last year, compared with $567 million in 2022. Source: Crypto ransom attack payments hit record $1 billion in 2023 – Chainalysis | Reuters
Crypto lender Genesis Global has settled a lawsuit that the New York Attorney General brought against it last year, eliminating a major legal burden as it wades through its bankruptcy proceedings. Attorney General Letitia James had sued the company, its parent Digital Currency Group (DCG) and cryptocurrency firm Gemini Trust Co in October for allegedly “defrauding” investors of more than…
Elon Musk was unhappy, to put it mildly, with the ruling last week from a Delaware court that invalidated a $55.8 billion pay package he received from Tesla, his electric car company. Shortly afterward, he threatened to move Tesla’s incorporation out of Delaware to a less shareholder-friendly state. But, as we discuss in this episode of our news podcast, On…
A lawsuit targeting McCarter & English over failed exchange Voyager Digital Holdings Inc. shows the risk firms face when giving advice in the fast-changing—and sometimes dizzying—world of crypto. *** Lawyers found themselves in “uncharted territory” as crypto’s popularity led corporate firms to launch practices, said James Cox, a Duke University law professor. Opinions on whether a crypto asset is an…
An ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst accused of using confidential information to trade in the likes of ARM Holdings Plc shouldn’t be found guilty because he didn’t even know he was classed as an insider by the bank, his lawyer told a London jury. Mohammed Zina, who worked in the Conflicts Resolution Group at Goldman, is accused of using insider…
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s admission that it misrepresented evidence in a lawsuit against the blockchain project DEBT Box casts doubt on its wider enforcement practices, several Republican senators argued in a letter to Chair Gary Gensler. *** “Regardless of whether commission staff deliberately misrepresented evidence or unknowingly presented false information, this case suggests other enforcement cases brought by…
…As the Wall Street Journal put it in an article late last week, “Investors have wondered when the pain from the downturn in commercial property would hit banks.” As the Journal noted in the same article, the commercial property-related pain has now arrived for some banks. Several banks, including New York Community Bancorp (NYCB), suffered significant stock price drops after…