Yearly Archives: 2016

FinCEN: Know Your Customer Requirements

Dan Ryan is Leader of the Financial Services Advisory Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. This post is based on a PwC publication by Mr. Ryan, Sean Joyce, Joseph Nocera, Jeff Lavine, Didier Lavion, and Armen Meyer.

In recent years, authorities in the US and abroad have increased their focus on modernizing and enforcing anti-money laundering and terrorism financing (AML) regulations. As part of these efforts, the US’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proposed Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements in 2014, which we expect to be finalized this year. [1]

FinCEN’s KYC requirements were proposed as part of a broader regulation setting out the core elements of a customer due diligence program. [2] Taken together, these elements are intended to help financial institutions avoid illicit transactions by improving their view of their clients’ identities and business relationships.

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Fed Rules on CFO Attestation Requirements

This post is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell LLP publication authored by Andrew R. Gladin, Mark J. Welshimer, and Sarah C. Flowers. The complete publication, including Annexes, is available here.

On January 21, 2016, the Federal Reserve published in the Federal Register a final rule (the “Final Rule”) [1] modifying Forms FR Y-14A, FR Y-14Q and FR Y-14M (collectively, the “FR Y-14 Forms”). Most notably, the Final Rule requires the chief financial officer (“CFO”) of each bank holding company (“BHC”) that is overseen by the Federal Reserve’s Large Institution Supervision Coordinating Committee (the “LISCC Firms”) and that reports on the FR Y-14 Forms to make attestations regarding those forms and to “agree to report material weaknesses and any material errors in the data” reported on those forms.

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2015 Year-End Activism Update

Barbara L. Becker is partner and co-chair of the Mergers and Acquisitions Practice Group at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and Eduardo Gallardo is a partner focusing on mergers and acquisitions, also at Gibson Dunn. The following post is based on a Gibson Dunn M&A Client Alert. The full publication, including charts and survey of settlement agreements, is available here.

This post provides an update on shareholder activism activity involving domestically traded public companies with market capitalizations above $1 billion during the second half of 2015, together with a look back at shareholder activism throughout 2015. While many pundits have suggested shareholder activism peaked in 2015, shareholder activism continues to be a major factor in the marketplace, involving companies of all sizes and activists new and old. Activist funds managed approximately $122 billion as of September 30, 2015 (vs. approximately $32 billion as at December 31, 2008). [1] In 2015 as compared to 2014, we saw a significant uptick in the total number of public activist actions (94 vs. 64), involving both a higher number of companies targeted (80 vs. 59) and a higher number of activist investors (56 vs. 34). [2]

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Weekly Roundup: January 29–February 4


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This roundup contains a collection of the posts published on the Forum during the week of January 29, 2016 to February 4, 2016.











2016 Proxy Season: Engagement, Transparency, Proxy Access

Howard B. Dicker is a partner in the Public Company Advisory Group of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. This post is based on a Weil publication; the complete publication, including footnotes and appendix, is available here. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes Lucian Bebchuk’s The Case for Shareholder Access to the Ballot and The Myth of the Shareholder Franchise (discussed on the Forum here), and Private Ordering and the Proxy Access Debate by Lucian Bebchuk and Scott Hirst (discussed on the Forum here).

While shareholders have a wide spectrum of views on corporate objectives, the time horizon for realizing these objectives and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, there is an emerging consensus that—regardless of size, industry or profitability—public companies must achieve greater accountability to their shareholders, through engagement and transparency, than ever before. Corporate engagement and transparency now take two forms: direct dialogue, increasingly involving directors, and enhanced proxy statement and other public disclosure that sheds light on the company’s strategy and the performance of its board, board committees and management, demonstrates responsiveness to shareholder ESG concerns, and justifies the composition of the board in light of the company’s present needs. Throughout this post, we offer practical suggestions about “what to do now” to meet shareholder expectations about engagement and transparency and to address a host of other new developments for the 2016 proxy season.

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In re Lions Gate: Corporate Disclosure of Securities Enforcement

David M.J. Rein is a partner in the Litigation Group at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP . This post is based on a Sullivan & Cromwell memorandum by Mr. Rein and Jacob E. Cohen. The complete publication, including footnotes, is available here.

On January 22, 2016, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Judge John Koeltl) dismissed In re Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. Securities Litigation, a putative securities fraud class action lawsuit, brought under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The complaint alleged that the company should have disclosed publicly the pendency of a Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) investigation, the company’s intention to settle with the SEC and the company’s receipt of a so-called “Wells Notice”—i.e., a letter from the SEC Enforcement Division staff informing the company that it “has decided to recommend that the Commission bring an enforcement proceeding.”

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The New Paradigm for Corporate Governance

Martin Lipton is a founding partner of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, specializing in mergers and acquisitions and matters affecting corporate policy and strategy. This post is based on a Wachtell Lipton memorandum. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism by Lucian Bebchuk, Alon Brav, and Wei Jiang (discussed on the Forum here), and The Myth that Insulating Boards Serves Long-Term Value by Lucian Bebchuk (discussed on the Forum here). Critiques of the Bebchuk-Brav-Jiang study by Wachtell Lipton, and responses to these critiques by the authors, are available on the Forum here.

Since I first identified a nascent new paradigm for corporate governance with leading major institutional investors supporting long-term investment and value creation and reducing or eliminating outsourcing to ISS and activist hedge funds, there has been a steady stream of statements by major investors outlining the new paradigm. In addition, a number of these investors are significantly expanding their governance departments so that they have in-house capability to evaluate governance and strategy and there is no need to outsource to ISS and activist hedge funds. The following is a summary consolidation of what these investors are saying in various forums.

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2015 Year-End Securities Litigation Update

Jonathan C. Dickey is partner and Co-Chair of the National Securities Litigation Practice Group at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. This post is based on a Gibson Dunn publication.

The year was yet another eventful one in securities litigation, from the Supreme Court’s game-changing opinion in Omnicare regarding liability for opinion statements, to several significant opinions out of the Delaware courts regarding, among other things, financial advisor liability and the apparent end to disclosure-only settlements. This post highlights what you most need to know in securities litigation developments and trends for the last half of 2015:

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Corporate Governance Survey—2015 Proxy Season

David A. Bell is partner in the corporate and securities group at Fenwick & West LLP. This post is based on portions of a Fenwick publication titled Corporate Governance Practices and Trends: A Comparison of Large Public Companies and Silicon Valley Companies (2015 Proxy Season); the complete survey is available here.

Since 2003, Fenwick has collected a unique body of information on the corporate governance practices of publicly traded companies that is useful for Silicon Valley companies and publicly-traded technology and life science companies across the U.S. as well as public companies and their advisors generally. Fenwick’s annual survey covers a variety of corporate governance practices and data for the companies included in the Standard & Poor’s 100 Index (S&P 100) and the high technology and life science companies included in the Silicon Valley 150 Index (SV 150). [1]

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Crowdfunding and the Digital Shareholder

Andrew A. Schwartz is an Associate Professor at University of Colorado Law School. This post is based on Professor Schwartz’s recent article published in The Minnesota Law Review, available here.

After several years of delay, Internet-based securities crowdfunding is finally poised to go live this year thanks to the SEC’s recent issuance of Regulation Crowdfunding. Through crowdfunding, people of modest means will for the first time be legally authorized to make investments that are currently offered exclusively to “accredited” (wealthy) investors. This democratization of entrepreneurial finance sounds great in theory, but will it work in practice? Will non-accredited investors really buy unregistered securities in speculative startups, over the Internet, with only the barest form of disclosure? The conventional wisdom among most legal scholars is, basically, no. In their view, securities crowdfunding is doomed to failure for myriad reasons, including fraud, [1] costs, [2] dilution, [3] adverse selection, [4] opportunism, [5] and more. [6]

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