A Record Pre-Taliation Sanction!

pre-taliation

Hold everything, compliance officers. The Securities and Exchange Commission just dropped its biggest pre-taliation enforcement action ever, a $10 million punch to financial services firm D.E. Shaw for problematic language in employment agreements that the company used all the way into this year.  The enforcement action, announced Friday, is far, far larger than any other…

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CBRE Busted on Pre-taliation Clauses

pre-taliation

The Securities and Exchange Commission has sanctioned real estate giant CBRE for including pre-taliation clauses in employee severance agreements. This is the second pre-taliation enforcement action we’ve seen from the SEC in recent weeks, so apparently we have to review this nonsense yet again because it’s still a thing.  Pre-taliation, as all compliance professionals should…

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Congress Tries Anew on Whistleblower Fixes

whistleblower

Several big names in the Senate have filed legislation that would clarify the protections for whistleblowers who first report their concerns to internal compliance teams and force the SEC to decide whistleblower awards more quickly. Dubbed the “SEC Whistleblower Reform Act,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, filed the bill last week along…

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SEC Reforms Whistleblower Reforms

whistleblower

The Securities and Exchange Commission quietly voted last week to expand the ways that whistleblowers might win awards for reporting misconduct to regulators, and reversed previous rule changes from the Trump Administration that capped especially large awards. Neither development is a surprise, nor should they be particularly disruptive to the internal reporting programs that corporate…

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Twitter Allegations: Begin at the Top

twitter

Corporate compliance and audit professionals might want to clear your schedules. The former head of security for Twitter has published a stunning whistleblower complaint against the company, alleging all manner of security failures at the social media giant — and that management then lied to the board and regulators about the severity of the problems. …

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SEC Dings Brinks on Pre-taliation

pre-taliation

Just in time for Throwback Thursday, cash management company Brinks Co. has agreed to pay $400,000 to settle charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission that its employment contracts included pre-taliation clauses — a whistleblower no-no that had been largely dormant since 2016. As outlined in a settlement order quietly announced this week, the SEC…

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Tips on Whistleblower Tips

whistleblower

I had the good fortune this week to attend a panel discussion on the latest developments in whistleblower tips and SEC enforcement. Given how often whistleblower tips turn into big, complicated headaches for corporate compliance officers, let me pass along some insightful morsels from the speakers.  The panel was part of the day-long Securities Enforcement…

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JPMorgan Replies on Retaliation Claim

JPMorgan

We have an update on that lawsuit filed last year by a former compliance officer at JP Morgan, who says she was fired for raising concerns about weaknesses in the bank’s compliance program. JPMorgan has now filed a motion to dismiss, and depicts the former compliance officer as a terrible employee who was fired for…

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The Deeper Meaning in the Facebook Scandal

facebook

This week I’ve kept one semi-interested eye on Frances Haugen, more commonly known as the Facebook whistleblower. Her bombshells launched — the 60 Minutes interview, the testimony before Congress, the leaked documents — were all devastating to Facebook, but compliance professionals should look deeper. Haugen’s arrival on the scene portends something deeper, too.  By now…

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It’s Back! Pre-taliation Enforcement

pre-taliation

Oh good lord. The Securities and Exchange Commission just dinged a financial services firm in New York $209,000 for including a “pre-taliation” clause in its employee manual, an eye-rolling offense against whistleblowers that I thought had gone extinct in 2016. Apparently not. The firm in question is Guggenheim Securities, the broker-dealer subsidiary of hedge fund…

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