Corporate governance - Vigil

In addition to going to court to seek sanctions, the Securities and Exchange Commission may impose civil money penalties in its own administrative proceedings on any person who violates or causes a violation of the securities laws. [1] Unlike district courts, administrative law judges do not have authority to base penalties on respondents’ pecuniary gains resulting from violations. [2] Instead, under the various penalty statutes, maximum penalties in administrative proceedings are based on “each act or omission” violating or causing a violation of the securities laws. Currently, the maximum penalties for each act or omission violating the securities laws are:

In an insider-trading case that will be closely watched until it is decided before the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari yesterday to decide critical open questions about what is required to establish insider trading by a remote “tippee”—specifically, what kind of personal benefit must a “tipper” receive, and what knowledge of that benefit must the “tippee” have, for a conviction or sanction to stand.

On November 18, 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) proposed amendments (the “Proposal”) to Regulation ATS and related rules under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchang...

Last year’s robust acquisition financing market helped drive the headline-grabbing deals and record volume of M&A in 2015. At the same time, credit markets were volatile in 2015 and appeared to have shifted fundamentally as the year went on—and with them, the types of deals that can get done and the available methods of financing them. U.S. and European regulation of financial institutions, monetary policy, corporate debt levels and economic growth prospects have coalesced to create a more challenging acquisition financing market than we’ve seen in many years. As a result, 2016 is likely to be a year that demands creativity from corporate deal-makers, and where financing costs, availability and timing have significant influence over the type, shape and success of corporate deal-making.

Goodwill announces that workers in the Toronto region will not be receiving paycheques this week, as employee anger continues to mount amidst the organization’s ongoing financial collapse

On December 15, 2015, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (“PCAOB”) issued a new rule and related amendments to its auditing standards that require accounting firms to disclose, in a new PCAOB form, specified information regarding the engagement partner and other accounting firms that participated in the audit. [1]

In our paper, Political Values, Culture, and Corporate Litigation, published in the latest issue of Management Science, we examine whether the political culture of a firm defines its ethical and legal boundaries as observed by the propensity for corporate misconduct. Using one of the largest samples of litigation data to date, we show that firms with Republican culture are more likely to be the subject of civil rights, labor, and environmental litigation than Democratic firms, consistent with the Democratic ideology that emphasizes equal rights, labor rights, and environmental protection. However, firms with Democratic culture are more likely to be the subject of litigation related to securities fraud and intellectual property rights violations than Republican firms whose Party ideology stresses self-reliance, property rights, market discipline, and limited government regulation.

U.S. activist hedge fund Livermore Partners is calling on Canadian and UK media firm Entertainment One to slow down its pace of dealmaking and improve its cash flow, the fund's top executive said.