In the following guest post, John Reed Stark takes a look at the troubling rise of ransomware attacks, and the disturbing relationship between ransomware attacks and bitcoin. John is the President of John Reed Stark Consulting and former Chief of the SEC’s Office of Internet Enforcement. I would like to thank John for allowing me to publish his article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is John’s article. Continue Reading Guest Post: Ransomware’s Year-End Thank You Note to Bitcoin
On January 6, 2020, solar panel company First Solar announced that it had settled the securities class action lawsuit pending against the company and certain of its executive officers for a payment of $350 million. During the long course of this matter, the case made its way to the Ninth Circuit a couple of times; the case even involved an unsuccessful petition to the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. In addition to its sheer size, there are a number of other interesting aspects to this settlement, as discussed below. The settlement is subject to court approval. The company’s January 6, 2020 press release can be found 
After a run of several years where numerous banks failed each year, 
Last August, when prominent litigation funding firm Burford Capital Ltd. was hit with as securities class action lawsuit, I 
The liability environment for directors and officers is always in a state of change, but 2019 was a particularly eventful year in the D&O liability arena, with important consequences for the D&O insurance marketplace. The past year’s many developments have significant implications for what may lie ahead in 2020 – and possibly for years to come, as well. I have set out below the Top Ten D&O Stories of 2019, with a focus on the future implications. 
The number of federal court securities class action lawsuit filings during 2019 was consistent with the heightened number of filings in each of the two prior years. The total number of suits during 2019 was significantly increased by the number of federal court merger objection lawsuit filings, but even just with respect to the traditional suit filings, the number of securities suit filings in 2019 was well above historical levels. The 2019 federal court securities litigation rate (that is, the number of lawsuits relative to the number of listed companies) was at an all-time high. 
