2019

On 21 February, the UK Financial Conduct Authority issued its first competition enforcement decision against three asset management firms. The FCA imposed fines totaling £414,900 for an infringement based on the sharing of strategic information on a bilateral basis during an IPO and a placing, shortly before share prices were set. The decision reflects increasing…

On February 15, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) announced that it had settled—on a no-admit, no-deny basis—with Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation (“Cognizant”) for alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the “FCPA”) involving Cognizant’s former president and chief legal officer.[1] The same day, the Department of Justice (the “DOJ”) indicted the two former executives and the SEC filed a civil complaint seeking permanent injunctions, monetary penalties, and officer-and-director bars against them. The DOJ declined to prosecute Cognizant.[2] The DOJ’s declination was in part based on the fact that Cognizant quickly and voluntarily self-reported the conduct, and, as a result of that self-report, the DOJ was able to identify culpable individuals. This settlement reflects the DOJ demonstrating its continued commitment to its FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy, under which the DOJ has committed to extending significant cooperation credit, up to and including declinations, to companies that provide meaningful assistance to further DOJ investigations. The resolution also reflects the DOJ’s “anti-piling on” policy in action, as the DOJ declination recognized the “adequacy of remedies such as civil or regulatory enforcement actions,” namely Cognizant’s resolution with the SEC, as a factor in declining to prosecute.[3]
Continue Reading DOJ Issues Twelfth Declination Letter Under FCPA Cooperation Policy

On 12 February 2019, the English High Court issued a judgment in proceedings related to the takeover of Autonomy Corporation Limited (now ACL Netherlands BV) by the Hewlett-Packard group in 2011. The question before the Court was whether a U.S. grand jury subpoena served on Hewlett Packard Enterprise (the U.S. parent company of the claimants)…

On January 29, 2019, the SEC announced four settlements with publicly-traded companies for failure to maintain adequate internal control over financial reporting.

None of the companies was charged with making false or inaccurate statements, either about its ICFR or otherwise; indeed, each had repeatedly disclosed material weaknesses in ICFR over many years.

These cases are…

Last week, in SEC v. Scoville, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that Dodd-Frank allows the Securities and Exchange Commission to bring fraud claims based on sales of securities to foreign buyers where defendants engage in fraudulent conduct within the United States.

In so holding, the Court concluded that Dodd-Frank…

On January 10, 2019, a Magistrate Judge in the Northern District of California issued an order denying an application for a search warrant that would have compelled any individual present at the premises to be searched to unlock their digital devices using biometric features, such as thumb prints and facial scans.  The order is notable in that the search warrant was not rejected on Fourth Amendment grounds, but rather on the grounds that requiring a person to unlock his or her digital device ran afoul of the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination.[1]  Providing a thumb or facial scan, the court reasoned, constituted testimony protected by the Fifth Amendment, analogizing biometrics to passwords that similarly protect information stored on devices.  This decision highlights the current tension in the courts on the accessibility of information stored on digital devices, and the courts’ continuing efforts to develop rules governing this rapidly-evolving area of law.
Continue Reading Court Holds That 5th Amendment Self-Incrimination Privilege Precludes Compelling Fingerprint or Facial Recognition Access to Digital Devices

Nearly a decade ago, WikiLeaks ushered in the age of mass leaks.  Since then, corporations, governments, public figures and private entities have increasingly had to reckon with a new reality: that vigilantes, activists, extortionists and even state actors can silently steal and rapidly disseminate proprietary information, including customer data and other sensitive information.  Last month, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) indicted four individuals based on information first revealed in the “Panama Papers” leak.  This marks a significant milestone in law enforcement’s reliance on evidence based on an unauthorized mass leak of information.  While leaks and hacks are not a novel phenomenon—in 1971, the New York Times published top secret documents on the Vietnam War and, in 1994, a paralegal leaked tobacco industry documents that ultimately cost the industry billions of dollars in litigation and settlement costs—the frequency, scale and ease of dissemination of leaked information today presents a difference not only of degree, but of kind.  The new Panama Papers-based criminal case will likely raise a host of novel legal issues based on legal challenges to the DOJ’s reliance on information illegally obtained by a third party, as well as information that would ordinarily be protected by the attorney-client privilege.  In this memorandum, we discuss the potential issues raised by the prosecution and their implications.
Continue Reading U.S. Criminal Prosecution Based on Panama Papers Hack Raises Novel Legal Issues

As discussed in Cleary Gottlieb’s December 21, 2018 Alert Memorandum, on December 18, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued an important ruling in In re Grand Jury Subpoena, holding, inter alia, that foreign state-owned corporations are subject to criminal jurisdiction in the United States and upholding Special Counsel…

On January 11, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied the appeal of Rajat Gupta, who was seeking to undo his insider trading conviction.  Relying on the Second Circuit’s decision in United States v. Newman, Gupta argued that—to satisfy the requirement that Gupta personally benefit from tipping inside information—the Government must show “a quid pro quo – in which [Gupta] receive[d] an ‘objective, consequential . . . gain of a pecuniary or similarly valuable nature.’”[1]  In other words—intangible benefits should not, standing alone, constitute a personal benefit sufficient to uphold a criminal conviction.  The Second Circuit rejected this argument, finding that the Supreme Court’s decisions in Dirks v. SEC and Salman v. United States foreclosed such a narrow definition of “benefit,” opting instead for a test that looked at “varying sets of circumstances”—including those that involve indirect, intangible, and nonquantifiable gains, such as an anticipated quid quo pro that can be inferred from an ongoing, business relationship—to satisfy the “personal benefit” test.[2]  This case is the latest in a line of decisions—in the Supreme Court, as well as the Second and Ninth Circuits—to reject defendants’ arguments for a narrow definition of the “personal benefit” element of insider trading law based on Newman.
Continue Reading Second Circuit Denies Gupta Appeal of Insider Trading Conviction—Continuing to Give Broad Meaning to “Personal Benefit” Requirement

On December 26, 2018, the SEC announced settled charges against ADT Inc. after finding that ADT, in two earnings releases, gave undue emphasis to non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA figures because they identified the relevant GAAP measures only later and much less prominently.

Without admitting or denying the SEC’s factual or legal claims, ADT agreed to an…