David Keenan

Managing Associate
Securities Litigation & Regulatory Enforcement
(206) 839-4368
dkeenan@orrick.com
Read full biography at www.orrick.com

Mr. Keenan, an associate in Orrick's Seattle office, is a member of the Securities Litigation Group. His practice focuses on complex commercial litigation.

Mr. Keenan was the recipient of the 2011 Washington State Bar Association Outstanding Young Lawyer Award and the 2013 Seattle University School of Law Recent Graduate Award. Mr. Keenan is a graduate of the Seattle University School of Law where he was associate editor of the Seattle University Law Review, and received the Dean’s Medal as the top all-around student in his graduating class, an honor he achieved while working full-time and attending law school at night.

Prior to joining Orrick, Mr. Keenan served as a senior special agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security where he was assigned to the Financial and Trade Investigations Division, investigating money laundering, terrorist finance, bulk currency smuggling and bank, wire and identity fraud. Mr. Keenan also served as Homeland Security representative to the Western Washington banking community regarding bank secrecy and anti-money laundering issues. In addition, Mr. Keenan was previously a member of the Financial Intelligence Review Team under the direction of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle, and has presented on a panel on bank secrecy and suspicious activity reports at the National Advocacy Center. Prior to his position at the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Keenan worked as a special agent for the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he investigated drug smuggling, human trafficking and fraud.

Outside of work, David is very involved in service to the legal and non-profit communities, serving on five boards of directors and several committees with a particular focus on at-risk youth and access to justice issues.

David Keenan

Posts by David Keenan

NASDAQ

Inside Out: NASDAQ Proposes Rule to Require Internal Auditing

Posted on
by , and

The NASDAQ Stock Market recently submitted a proposed rule change that would require all companies listed on the NASDAQ to maintain an internal audit function. The function would “provide management and the audit committee with ongoing assessments of the Company’s risk management processes and system of internal control.” In addition, the company’s audit committee would be required to meet periodically with the internal auditors and oversee the internal audit function. If implemented, the rule would require companies listed prior to June 30, 2013 to establish the internal audit function by December 31, 2013. Companies listed after June 30, 2013 would have to establish the function prior to listing.

The purpose of the proposed rule is to ensure that listed companies have a mechanism to regularly review and assess their internal controls and ensure management and audit committees receive information about risk management. The NASDAQ also believes the internal audit function will assist companies in complying with Rules 13a-15 and 15d-15, which require management to evaluate a company’s internal controls on a quarterly basis.

Despite the rule’s requirement of an internal audit function, the proposed language permits companies “to outsource this function to a third party service provider other than its independent auditor.” So, while the rule permits the internal audit work to be done by an outside third party, the company cannot engage the same auditing firm as both its internal and external auditor. In other words, the company needs both an independent outside auditor that cannot act as the inside auditor and an inside auditor that can be an outside auditor as long as it’s not the independent outside auditor.

Although most companies listed on the NASDAQ already have an internal audit function, the proposed rule would bring the NASDAQ into alignment with the New York Stock Exchange, which already requires its listed companies to have an internal audit function. See NYSE Listed Company Manual Section 303A.07(c).

The deadline for comments on the proposed rule is March 29, 2013.

SEC, Uncategorized

Consenting Adults: D.C. Circuit Tells Press to Stay Out of SEC-AIG Relationship

Posted on
by , and

What happens between a mature multinational insurance corporation and its regulator is nobody’s business, or so says the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which issued an opinion in SEC v. AIG on February 1, telling the press that it couldn’t have reports prepared by an AIG consultant under a consent decree with the SEC.

In 2004—years before AIG would rise to infamy in the financial collapse—the SEC charged AIG with securities violations, and the result was a consent decree requiring, among other things, that AIG hire a consultant to review AIG’s transaction policies and procedures and to prepare reports. The court supervising the decree later allowed disclosure of the consultant’s reports twice: to the Office of Thrift Supervision and the House of Representatives. Sue Reisinger, a reporter for Corporate Counsel and American Lawyer, wanted to know what the consultant found at the government bailout recipient. Not being a regulator or constitutionally-created legislative body, Ms. Reisinger turned to the courts for access. The district court found that the consultant’s reports were “judicial records” to which Reisinger had a common law right of access. The court of appeals disagreed.

Whether something is a judicial record depends on the role it plays in the adjudicatory process. The court of appeals noted that the consultant’s reports were not relied upon by the district court in any way, and thus never found their way into the fabric of the court’s record or decision-making process. Though merely filing the reports with the court would not have been sufficient to transform them into the type of judicial records Reisinger sought, the court of appeals held that filing was “very much a prerequisite.” Thus, while the terms of the decree requiring a consultant were surely important to the district court, the court was agnostic as to the eventual content of the reports. In other words, Reisinger had the substantive cart before the procedural horse, and whatever those reports eventually contained, their import did not work to make them judicial records. Read More

SEC

Pick Your Poison: Regulators Find Overvalued Assets, Securities Fraud, and Insider Trading at Failed Thrift

Posted on
by , and

In a case involving all of the hallmarks of the housing and economic crisis, on September 25, 2012 the SEC announced that it had charged three Nebraska bank executives and the CEO’s son with violations of securities fraud and insider trading laws stemming from subprime lending, undercapitalization, and the ultimate demise of TierOne Bank.

TierOne Bank was a century-old thrift that had traditionally focused on loans to the agricultural and residential sectors in Midwestern states, but like many banks caught up in the housing boom, in 2004 TierOne expanded into riskier loans in then-exploding markets such as Nevada, Florida, and Arizona. All of these markets would collapse just a few years later, leaving banks like TierOne with significant losses on their books. As a result, in June 2008, the Office of Thrift Supervision gave TierOne a choice: maintain elevated core and risk-based capital ratios or face enforcement action—the top leaders at TierOne allegedly chose neither.

Rather than increase capital ratios or accept an OTS enforcement action, CEO Gilbert Lundstrom, COO James Laphen, and Chief Credit Officer Don Langford allegedly materially understated TierOne’s loan and OREO losses. Not to be confused with the cookie, “OREO” in the banking context refers to “other real estate owned”—in this case real estate that TierOne had repossessed. Though TierOne was left holding real estate from failed markets around the country, its executives allegedly ignored the fact that the value of these assets was based on stale and inadequately discounted appraisals, and consequently made misstatements in its 2008 10-K and a number of other filings. Read More

Dodd-Frank Act

The Tip Is In the Mail: Court Tries to Make Sense of Dodd-Frank’s Whistleblower and Retaliation Provisions and Asks Whether It’s Enough Just to Send a Letter

Posted on
by , and

In what may be one of the first Dodd-Frank retaliation claims to make it past a motion to dismiss, a federal court on September 25, 2012 issued a ruling attempting to harmonize the definition of “whistleblower” under the landmark statute with its protections against employer retaliation for engaging in whistleblower activities. Acting in accord with the SEC’s final rule on the statute as well as opinions from the few federal courts to have weighed in on the subject, the court sided with the alleged whistleblower.

For some eighteen years, Richard Kramer had served as the vice president of human resources and administration at Trans-Lux Corporation. In that role, he had a number of responsibilities related to Trans-Lux’s ERISA-governed pension plan. Concerned with what he saw as conflicts of interest and deficiencies in the pension plan committee’s composition and reporting, Kramer went to Trans-Lux’s leadership and later the board’s audit committee to sound the alarm. Kramer eventually sent a letter to the SEC the old-fashioned way—by regular mail—a choice that would later have significance in the case.

Within hours of Kramer reaching out to Trans-Lux’s audit committee with his concerns, Trans-Lux’s CEO and another Trans-Lux employee reprimanded Kramer, and went downhill from there: Kramer’s staff was reassigned, an investigation into him was launched by Trans-Lux’s in-house counsel, his responsibilities were diminished, and he was eventually terminated. Kramer later sued Trans-Lux, claiming among other things that the Company had retaliated against him in violation of Dodd-Frank. Trans-Lux moved to dismiss. Read More

SEC

Federal Court Tosses Out Much of SEC’s Case Against Former IndyMac Execs

Posted on
by and

A federal judge in California gutted the SEC’s case against the former CEO and former CFO of IndyMac Bank by granting partial summary judgment against the SEC and eliminating most of the claims. S.E.C. v. Perry, No. CV 11-1309 (C.D. Cal. May 21, 2012).   (Transcript)  The SEC had alleged that in 2008, IndyMac’s former CEO Michael W. Perry and former CFO A. Scott Keys participated in filing false and misleading disclosures in SEC filings.  (Complaint) The SEC claimed that even as Perry and Keys were receiving information regarding IndyMac’s rapidly deteriorating financial condition, the two executives made misleading statements and omissions regarding the bank’s liquidity, capital-raising needs and activities, and capital ratio, which the SEC alleged was an important indication of the bank’s soundness. Despite the breadth of the SEC’s allegations, U.S. District Judge Manuel Real of the Central District of California granted the defendants’ motion for partial summary judgment, leaving few issues for trial. Read More