Investigations, Enforcement, & Compliance Alerts

Recent enforcement actions targeting a CEO, CFO, and an audit committee chair underscores the SEC's focus on gatekeeper accountability.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently announced charges and million-dollar penalties against four companies for allegedly making materially misleading disclosures regarding cybersecurity risk and intrusions relating SolarWinds hack.

On September 25, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) announced settled charges against 25 entities and individuals for late beneficial-ownership and insider-transaction reports. The SEC had levied penalties on these filers because of failures to timely report information about their holdings and transactions in public-company stock. Without admitting or denying the charges, 2 public companies, 13 other entities, and 10 individuals agreed to cease committing and causing violations and pay civil penalties. The civil penalties ranged from $10,000 to $200,000 for individuals, and $40,000 to $750,000 for the entities involved, including $200,000 each for two public companies that were charged with contributing to filing failures by certain corporate insiders and failing to report their insiders’ filing delinquencies.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently charged a public company with violations of Regulation Fair Disclosure (“Regulation FD”) stemming from social media posts by the company’s CEO. These charges are evidence of a trend toward increased Regulation FD enforcement by the SEC.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently succeeded in its prosecution of former Ontrak CEO Terren Peizer for insider trading, which involved the misuse of his 10b5-1 trading plan. This post provides an overview of the case’s background and outcome, and highlights key lessons that directors and officers of public companies should consider.

On June 28, the Supreme Court overruled the longstanding Chevron deference doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Now, courts must interpret ambiguous statutes independently—without being required to accept an agency’s “permissible” interpretation of an ambiguous statute.