Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
With fewer large Texas law firms retaining lobby practice groups, those that remain are busier than ever as the 2023 legislative session promises key decisions on tax and regulatory issues for a wide range of corporate clients. The Texas Lawbook talks with three veteran lobbyists working to pass, change and kill legislation.
Four Houston-area men were among eight social media influencers accused Wednesday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of using Twitter, online chat rooms and a podcast to manipulate stock prices in a $100 million trading scam. The SEC complaint filed in federal court in Houston accuses the eight of promoting stocks via social media and then dumping shares they’d purchased once their promotional efforts drove up the stocks’ prices.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is looking for a new sheriff to aggressively police corporations, cryptocurrency operations, hedge funds and thousands of investment brokers and dealers in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Only a handful of people even qualify for the position, legal experts say.
“The challenge, though, will be to look around the corner for risks that are coming, which may depend on a number of unpredictable variables such as the economy, the markets and financial innovation,” said David Peavler, who resigned as SEC regional director last week.
Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) and his FTX exchange became the latest very public example exposing risks in cryptocurrency companies. It will take time before the entire impact of the FTX failure and bankruptcy is known. However, here are five things for investors to take away from the recent events involving FTX when considering the future of digital assets.
David Peavler is following in the steps of his two predecessors who were regional directors of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fort Worth office. Peavler, in an exclusive interview with The Texas Lawbook, said he will join the Dallas office of the global law firm Jones Day as a partner leading the firm’s Texas securities litigation and SEC enforcement practice. Peavler, who announced Thursday that he was resigning as the regional director of the SEC, is a huge catch for Jones Day because of his deep experience in the area of financial accounting and because he has prior experience as a corporate general counsel – the very people who hire Jones Day for legal advice.
AT&T and the SEC announced they have agreed to settle a lawsuit that accused the Dallas-based telecom giant of selectively leaking confidential financial information to Wall Street analysts in hopes of potentially manipulating revenue projections during the first quarter 2016. Two AT&T in-house counsel and a slew of lawyers from Norton Rose Fulbright, Tillotson Johnson & Patton, Willkie Farr and Haynes and Boone represented AT&T and its executives.
For nearly two decades, David Peavler has roamed the offices of the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fort Worth Regional Office – first as a rookie lawyer in its enforcement position, later as assistant regional director and for the past three-and-a-half years as the head of the office. The SEC announced Thursday that Peavler is stepping down as the director of the Fort Worth Regional Office this Saturday. Associate regional directors Eric Werner and Marshall Gandy will fill the role until a replacement is announced. Experts say Peavler scored huge successes during his time at the SEC and his departure is a major loss.
Ask any fraud prosecutor what their bread-and-butter criminal statute is, and you’ll surely hear about mail fraud or wire fraud. Taken together, they account for a significant percentage of fraud prosecutions at the federal level. Both statutes are broad and malleable, requiring a fraudulent scheme to obtain money or property, a criminal intention to defraud someone and either a mailing or interstate wire transmission. And, properly drafted, just about every type of economic crime can be cabined into a charge of mail or wire fraud. The U.S. Supreme Court is revisiting the scope of property rights protected under the mail and wire fraud statutes this term in Ciminelli v. United States.
Over the last year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been laser-focused on the use of personal devices by employees of the large Wall Street banks to conduct company business. The SEC’s investigations have focused on whether the banks complied with the “books and records” requirement that they preserve all communications that relate to company business. The SEC’s actions are having a ripple effect in civil litigation as well.
Eleven SMU Dedman School of Law alumni and the school’s new dean were sworn in before the nation's high court in a live ceremony before all nine justices this month. The group also heard oral arguments in two related administrative law cases.
"It was like being on the 50-yard line at the Super Bowl. But better," Amy Osteen, a 2000 graduate of the law school, said.
Whatever the outcome of Tuesday's mid-term election, the results will likely have great influence over U.S. energy policies in years to come. The various directions of those policies were discussed in a webinar involving partners at Akin Gump. Nushin Huq has their observations on the possibilities.
About 75 lawyers attended in-person or online a CLE that delved into enforcement priorities at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fort Worth Regional Office, what impact recent Fifth Circuit decisions could have on SEC actions, and how to navigate clients through uncertain times during an increase in rulemaking initiatives.
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