News & Commentary on Financial Regulatory and Compliance Matters
On Monday, June 26, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review whether the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA) prohibits retaliation against internal whistleblowers or only covers individuals who report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC).
This question has divided practitioners and lower courts alike since Dodd-Frank’s passage in 2010. As reported in our…
In an announcement this week related to FY 2016 enforcement statistics, the SEC reported another increase and outlined its continued robust efforts. In 2016, the SEC filed 868 enforcement actions besting its 2015 total by 61 actions and 2014 by 113 actions. Although enforcement actions were up, the SEC announced that it had obtained judgments…
Recent SEC Fines
On Aug. 16, 2016, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it had issued its second fine in as many weeks concerning a company’s use of severance agreements that contain confidentiality and/or covenant-not-to-sue or release provisions that allegedly violate SEC whistleblower Rules.
These recent SEC charges arise from SEC Rules…
Both the SEC and the CFTC were authorized by the Dodd-Frank Act to reward certain persons for providing information that leads to an enforcement action. Prompted by such a “whistleblower’s” notification, the CFTC investigated and initiated a widely-reported civil enforcement action against a trader. Under the CFTC’s implementation of the whistleblower program, for information that leads to monetary sanctions in excess of $1 million, whistleblowers can be paid between 10% and 30% of the sanction.
Continue Reading CFTC Picking Up the Pace of Whistleblower Program