In March of 2024, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, on behalf of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”), announced a new, three-year Corporate Whistleblower Award Pilot Program (the “Pilot Program”), designed to incentivize and reward certain individuals who report corporate wrongdoing. This is the DOJ’s first whistleblower reward program. Continue reading DOJ Whistleblower Program
On February 8, 2024, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Murray v. UBS Securities LLC, et al., siding with whistleblower Trevor Murry in holding that whistleblowers seeking protection from retaliation under federal law needn’t show retaliatory intent on the part of their employers. Continue reading SCOTUS Sides with Whistleblowers in UBS Case
Last Wednesday, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (“SDNY”) announced the launch of a whistleblower pilot program, designed to proactively uncover criminal conduct in the Continue reading SDNY Whistleblower Pilot Program
Last Friday, the SEC announced that the agency had settled charges against D.E. Shaw & Co. LP, a New-York based investment advisor. Since 2011, and through at least 2019, D.E. Shaw had been in habit of requiring employees to sign agreements prohibiting the disclosure of confidential corporate information to third parties. These agreements did not have an exception for potential whistleblowers. The company also required departing employees to sign releases before receiving post-termination payments; those releases required the employees to affirm that they have not filed any complaints with any government agency. The settlement included a $10 million dollar civil money penalty. Continue reading SEC Frowns on Impeding Potential Whistleblowers: $10 Million Fine
On May 30, 2023, the Supreme Court declined to review a challenge to an SEC award decision brought by an anonymous attorney who blew the whistle on a foreign bribery scheme. (Case No. 22-963.) The decision comes after the Second Circuit denied the whistleblower’s petition for review of the SEC’s order in November 2022, and further denied a petition for a rehearing in December of the same year. The Whistleblower’s cert petition can be found here, while the SEC’s Order and the Second Circuit’s Summary Order are available as part of the appendix to the petition. Continue reading Supreme Court Denies Cert in Whistleblower Case
We have written extensively on LIBOR-related issues over the years, and we were interested to see the two recent publications by Andy Verity, the BBC’s economics correspondent, in The Times (see here and here). The linked articles are extracts from Verity’s upcoming book, Rigged, which investigates the LIBOR-rigging scandal—and presents claims that “investigating agencies, including the FBI in the United States and Britian’s financial regulator, were told in November 2010 of an international drive to get Libor and Euribor rates down, regardless of the real cost of borrowing cash.” Continue reading LIBOR Update: Rigged Revelations
While we have written frequently on various LIBOR-related litigations, this post will focus on a yet-uncovered action—Sonterra Capital Master Fund, Ltd. V. Credit Suisse Group AG et al.—targeting the Swiss Franc LIBOR.
The 2015 class action complaint, brought by Sonterra Capital against Credit Suisse, JP Morgan, RBS, UBS, and a series of Doe defendants, alleged that Defendants had engaged in a conspiracy to manipulate Swiss Franc LIBOR and the prices of Swiss Franc LIBOR-based derivatives. As with the many other LIBOR actions, the heart of the allegations concerns misreporting: namely, that Defendants failed to accurately report their borrowing costs—the basis for the Swiss Franc LIBOR calculation—and instead altered their pricing submissions to manipulate the prices of financial instruments based on that metric, for their own financial benefit.
Continue reading Swiss Franc LIBOR Class Action: Credit Suisse Settlement
In our most recent post about In re Mexican Government Bonds Antitrust Litigation, 18-cv-02830, we discussed the recent settlements with JP Morgan and Barclays, as well as Plaintiffs then-outstanding motion for reconsideration of the court’s November 2020 Order dismissing the Second Amended Class Action Complaint (“SACC”) against a subset of the Defendants.[1] That motion has since been decided, and—unfortunately for Plaintiffs—denied. Continue reading Mexican Government Bonds Antitrust Litigation: Reconsideration Motion Denied
A few weeks ago, we posted about a series of settlements in the SIBOR benchmark manipulation litigation: Plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary approval of a settlement with Credit Suisse, Continue reading Benchmark Manipulation: Another SIBOR Settlement
Earlier this year, we posted a series of updates on briefing in the SIBOR benchmark manipulation litigation (You can find those posts here, here, and here.) Today, we’re back to talk about a new development: settlements! Continue reading Benchmark Manipulation: SIBOR Settlements
