Month: April 2014

What’s The Opposite of Rubber Stamping a Settlement? Meet Judge Kane in SEC v. Van Gilder

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Judge John L. Kane of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado is uninterested in oxymoronic gimmicks, that much is clear.  In a fiery April 24, 2014 opinion, Judge Kane rejected settlements between the SEC and two individual defendants in an insider trading case.  Judge Kane evoked—both in style and via explicit citation—Judge Jed Rakoff’s well-known rejection of the proposed settlement in SEC v. Citigroup Global Markets and similarly rejected the proposed settlements because they included numerous “provisions and recitations that [he would] not endorse.”

Judge Kane’s ire was focused on the SEC’s proposed settlement with Michael Van Gilder, the individual who allegedly traded based on inside information in advance of a high-stakes acquisition and tipped friends and family in an email titled “Xmas present.”  The SEC’s proposed settlement with Van Gilder included a permanent injunction prohibiting future violations of Section 10(b) or Rule 10b-5, a $109,265 disgorgement payment (credited in part by a payment already made in a parallel criminal proceeding), and another $109,265 in civil penalties.  The proposal included a number of standard provisions for SEC settlements, including a waiver of the entry of findings of fact and conclusions of law, a waiver of the right to appeal from the entry of final judgment, “a statement that Van Gilder neither admits nor denies the allegations of the Complaint,” and enjoining Van Gilder from future violations of existing statutory law.  Judge Kane decisively rejected each of these in turn. READ MORE →

Money, Gold and Judges: D.C. Circuit Holds SEC’s Conflict Minerals Rule Violates the First Amendment

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On April 14, 2014, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held in National Assoc. of Mfg., et al. v. SEC that the required disclosures pursuant to the SEC’s Conflict Minerals Rule violated the First Amendment’s prohibition against compelled speech, throwing that rule into uncertainty and possibly opening the door to constitutional challenges to similar disclosure rules.

The Conflict Minerals Rule requires companies and foreign private issuers in the U.S. to disclose their use of “conflict minerals” both to the SEC and on their websites.  The Rule, which was adopted pursuant to Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act as a response to the Congo War, defines “conflict minerals” as gold, tantalum, tin, and tungsten from the Democratic Republic of Congo (“DRC”) or an adjoining country, which directly or indirectly financed or benefited armed groups in those countries.  The deadline for satisfying the Rule, which became effective in November 2012, is May 31, 2014.  The National Association of Manufacturers, along with Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, challenged the Rule in the district court and then appealed to the Circuit Court. READ MORE →

Halliburton Watch: Let’s Start with the Basics

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On March 5, 2014, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc., Case No. 13-317, and we are certain our blog readers are eagerly awaiting the Court’s ruling.  The case has potentially far-ranging implications for the survival of the Court’s landmark ruling in Basic, Inc. v. Levinson, 485 U.S. 224 (1988), which relied on the efficient market hypothesis to create the fraud-on-the-market presumption of reliance on misrepresentations.  This post provides background on the history of the Halliburton litigation and is the first in a series of posts that will analyze the arguments by the parties and amici, the Court’s ruling, and the potential implications for future litigation.

Plaintiff-Respondent Erica P. John Fund, Inc. is a not-for-profit group that supports the outreach work of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.  The Fund purchased stock in Halliburton Company and lost money when Halliburton’s stock price dropped following negative news regarding Halliburton’s (1) potential liability in asbestos litigation, (2) revenue accounting on fixed-price construction contracts, and (3) merger with Dresser Industries.  The Fund sued Halliburton and its CEO David Lesar alleging that they had previously made fraudulent misrepresentations concerning those topics in violation of §§ 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and SEC Rule 10b-5. READ MORE →

Out of Control: SEC Says Lack of Internal Controls Led to HP Paying More Than $108 Million to Settle FCPA Actions

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On April 9, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Hewlett-Packard had agreed to pay more than $108 million to settle Foreign Corrupt Practices Act actions brought by the SEC and the Department of Justice.  These actions were based on HP’s subsidiaries’ alleged payments of more than $3.6 million to Russian, Polish, and Mexican government officials to obtain or maintain lucrative public contracts.  The settlement is important because it highlights the SEC’s and DOJ’s continued focus on companies’ internal controls, particularly in the FCPA arena.  It also shows that the SEC may be able to use lesser, non-fraud offenses in which the underlying conduct involves a fairly de minimis amount of money to police behavior and subject companies to significant financial consequences. READ MORE →

Update on Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation Initiative

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On March 10, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced that issuers and underwriters of municipal securities may voluntarily report materially inaccurate statements made in offering documents regarding prior continuing disclosure compliance through a program called the Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation Initiative (the “MCDC Initiative”).

Orrick and BLX Group have issued a client alert with key information.

Delaware Supreme Court Tells Controlling Shareholders “If You Look Out For Your Minority, We’ll Look Out For You”

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On March 14, 2014, the Delaware Supreme Court unanimously affirmed an important Delaware Court of Chancery decision issued in 2013 that offered a roadmap to companies and their directors on how to obtain the protections of the deferential business judgment rule when entering into a change-in-control transaction with a controlling stockholder.  As we discussed previously, in In re MFW Shareholders Litigation, then-Chancellor (now Chief Justice) Strine held as a matter of first impression that the deferential business judgment rule – as opposed to the more onerous “entire fairness” – standard of review should apply to a merger with a controlling stockholder where (i) the controller conditions the transaction on the approval of both a Special Committee and a majority of the minority stockholders; (ii) the Special Committee is independent; (iii) the Special Committee is empowered to freely select its own advisors and to say no definitively; (iv) the Special Committee acts with care; (v) the minority vote is informed; and (vi) there is no coercion of the minority.
READ MORE →