AIG’s announcement on May 10, 2009 (here) that it was taking a $128 million charge to allow for write-downs on subprime loans issued by its savings banking division illustrates how widespread the fallout from the subprime lending collapse is, and suggests the possibility that there may be further reverberations across the business economy
Executive Pay: Grasso Wins a Round over Spitzer’s Ghost
In a partial but significant victory in the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division, former NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso may have accomplished just enough to be able to keep his infamous NYSE pay package. In April 2004, Eliot Spitzer, then New York’s Attorney General, sued Grasso to compel him to return the bulk
Thinking about D & O Claim Expense
In their perceptive and thought-provoking article, “The Missing Monitor in Corporate Governance: The Directors’ & Officers’ Liability Insurer” (here), Professors Tom Baker of Connecticut Law School and Sean Griffith of Fordham Law School, among other things, examine the consequences of the standard D & O policy feature whereby D & O insurers (by
International Affairs
It is nothing new for corporate America to have to contend with activist investors. But an activist international institutional investor, backed by a sovereign nation and burgeoning oil wealth and committed to a broadly-based social and environmental agenda, represents a different level of activist pressure. The prototype for this international institutional investor is the Norwegian
PwC Releases Its 2006 Securities Litigation Report
Adding its contribution to the previously released studies of NERA (here) and Cornerstone (here), PricewaterhouseCoopers recently released its annual report (here) regarding 2006 securities class action litigation. The PwC report is generally consistent with the other studies, but it does add a few interesting additional insights.
Perhaps most interesting
Going Private Lawsuits Surge
As the number of securities fraud lawsuits has declined (refer here), an alternative means that plaintiffs lawyers are finding to amuse and enrich themselves are lawsuits filed in connection with “going private” transactions. An April 24, 2007 National Law Journal article entitled “New Legal Battles Over Going Private” (here) takes a look