Earlier this month, the Southern District of New York issued its final ruling and remedies order in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ripple Labs, Inc. Judge Analisa Torres found that the SEC failed to show that any investor was harmed by Ripple’s sales of the crypto asset XRP, rejecting the SEC’s disgorgement theory.
The court
On July 31, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced that it agreed to settle allegations that a California-based broker-dealer sold in excess of $13 million in “L bonds,” a speculative, unrated debt security, to retail customers with lower risk profiles. The settlement of this case is notable because it was the SEC’s first
On June 25, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) charged an advanced materials company and its former executive officers with market manipulation, fraud and other securities law violations. The charges related to the alleged artificial inflation of the price of the company’s shares and the issuance and sale of shares through the company’s
SEC v. Jarkesy, No. 22-859
Introduction: In a decision with significant, wide-ranging consequences for federal agency enforcement authority, the Supreme Court today held that the Seventh Amendment bars the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from using in-house administrative adjudications to impose civil penalties for securities-fraud violations. Those actions must be brought in federal court
On May 22, 2024, the US House of Representatives passed H.R. 4763 – the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) – the first time a chamber of Congress has passed major digital asset legislation. While the prospects of FIT21 becoming law remain very uncertain, FIT21 is an important milestone in the
Answering a precise question increasingly raised by securities fraud plaintiffs, the United States Supreme Court held that a failure to disclose information cannot support a private action under Rule 10b–5(b) if the failure did not render any statements made misleading. Though the Court framed the case around the narrow issue of whether the failure to
The SEC paused implementation of the climate-related disclosure rules in the face of significant legal challenges. The rules would impose substantial disclosure mandates on companies, including concerning the costs of extreme weather events, corporate strategies for addressing climate change, corporate governance procedures and, for certain companies, greenhouse gas emissions.
The SEC had proposed the rules
We just published a new edition of Corporate Finance and the Securities Laws. This is the seventh edition. A new edition provides an opportunity to go through the whole book and evaluate the organization of it, whether there is material that is outdated and needs refreshing (beyond that undertaken in connection with regular annual updates)
Non-fungible token (“NFT”) issuers and the NFT market will want to take note of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) statement this week that NFTs issued by Impact Theory, LLC were “securities” under US federal securities law and the sale of those NFTs without registration or reliance on an exemption from the registration requirements
Just weeks after the novel securities analysis in SEC v. Ripple Labs was handed down, a different court in the Southern District of New York has distinguished the approach taken in Ripple and argued against its policy outcomes in another, high-profile enforcement action by the SEC involving digital assets. In this Legal Update, we examine