Financial Services

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On November 29, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a final rule aimed to ease compliance with certain aspects of the regulations promulgated under the Corporate Transparency Act. The final rule extends the deadline from 30 days to 90 days for entities created or registered during 2024…

On Friday, March 10, 2023, Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”) became the largest U.S. lender since the Great Financial Crisis to enter into receivership with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. SVB was a major provider of depository services and liquidity to various investment funds, managers and their related entities through subscription…

On January 1, 2021, Congress enacted the Corporate Transparency Act as part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 to “better enable critical national security, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts to counter money laundering, the financing of terrorism, and other illicit activity.” FinCEN issued the final rule on Beneficial Ownership…

In the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrencies, a crypto trader was convicted of insider trading in federal district court and recently sentenced to 10 months in prison.

The defendant, Nikhil Wahi, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to illegally trading on information tipped by his brother, a former Coinbase product manager. According to his plea, Wahi used that information to trade on 40 different kinds of crypto assets were scheduled to be listed on the Coinbase platform between April 2021 and July 2022, when he was arrested. Prosecutors alleged that Wahi used those tips to sell crypto assets for a profit. Under the terms of the plea agreement, Wahi agreed to serve ten months in prison. Wahi’s brother, Ishan Wahi, has pleaded not guilty and is due to appear in court in March.

The Second Circuit recently held that a denial of a motion to dismiss a criminal indictment based on the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”) is immediately appealable under the collateral-order doctrine but concluded that even if FSIA did provide immunity from criminal prosecutions, that immunity would not extend to a…

On December 11, 2020, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in a shareholder securities litigation against Goldman Sachs.[1] On appeal, Goldman argues that federal securities law permits issuer defendants in purported class actions to rebut the presumption of reliance where the alleged misstatements are of such a generic…

On August 25, 2016, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, proposed a rule that would require all banks, regardless of whether they are subject to regulation by a “Federal functional regulator,” to establish and implement written AML programs, conduct ongoing customer due diligence, and identify and verify the identity of the beneficial owners of their legal entity customers. The proposal would also extend customer identification program requirements to banks not covered under existing rules.

Section 546(e) of the bankruptcy code prohibits a bankruptcy trustee from avoiding “settlement payment[s]”, or payments “made in connection with a securities contract,” that are “made by or to (or for the benefit of)” qualifying financial entities, including financial institutions, stockbrokers, commodities brokers and others.   In a ruling that conflicts with precedent from the Second, Third, Sixth, Eighth, and Tenth Circuits, a decision last week by a Seventh Circuit panel held that the safe harbor provision of section 546(e) does not preclude a trustee from recovering a transfer to a party that was not a qualifying financial entity, where a qualifying financial institution was merely the conduit for the transaction.  See FTI Consulting v. Merit Management Group, LP.