As I have noted in prior posts on this site (here, for example) D&O insurers confront a number of underwriting challenges in the current financial environment, including a host of macroeconomic factors that are complicated affairs for their policyholders and that could even lead to claims. In the following guest post, Nessim Mezrahi and Stephen Sigrist take a look at the challenging factors the D&O insurers are facing and consider the implications. Mezrahi is co-founder and CEO and Sigrist is Vice President of Data Science at SAR LLC. A copy of this article previously was published on Law360. I would like to thank the authors for allowing me to publish their article on my 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 the authors’ article. Continue Reading Guest Post: D&O Insurer Challenges Amid Market, Economic Turbulence
The payment technology firm Block, Inc. (formerly known as Square) has been hit with a securities class action lawsuit related to the company’s announcement earlier this year that a former employee had improperly accessed and downloaded company customer data. The new lawsuit is the latest example of the ways in which data security incidents can translate into D&O claims. The complaint, filed on October 11, 2022, can be found 
In the latest lawsuit to emerge in the aftermath of the recent SPAC frenzy, a plaintiff shareholder has filed a securities class action suit against Opendoor Technologies, a residential real estate digital platform, which merged into a publicly traded SPAC in December 2020. The SPAC involved was one of the many financial vehicles launched by the so-called “
A recurring issue concerning directors’ duties is the question whether or not directors have duties to their company’s creditors when the company is in the “zone of insolvency.” In an interesting recent decision, the U.K. Supreme Court addressed the duty of directors to creditors when their company becomes insolvent or when it approaches or is at risk of insolvency. In a case in which it decided that the directors for the company before the Court were not liable, the Court ruled that the creditor duty may arise not only when the company is insolvent but when it is “bordering on insolvency,” though the creditor duty does not become paramount until insolvency is “inevitable.” The Court’s October 5, 2022 decision in BTI 204 LLC v. Sequana SA can be found 
In an interesting and unusual development, the victims’ trust that was created as part of the Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) bankruptcy has reached an agreement to settle the trust’s assigned claims against PG&E’s directors and officers for $117 million. According to the parties’ settlement agreement, the settlement is to be funded entirely with proceeds from PG&E’s D&O insurance program. As discussed below, there are a number of interesting aspects and implications to this settlement A copy of the Fire Victim’s Trust’s September 29, 2022 press release about the settlement can be found 
After several quarters in a hard market, the D&O insurance marketplace is now in transition, with important implications for buyers, brokers, and underwriters. On October 11, 2022, I will be participating in a Tuesdays with Lloyd’s seminar with Michelle Comtois of Marsh and Johnathan Tritton of Acrisure London Wholesale. The free 45-minute webinar begins at 11 am EDT. For more information and to register, please refer 
The D&O Diary’s sojourn in Asia continued last week with a visit to 
The D&O Diary is on assignment in Asia this week, with the first stop on the itinerary in the equatorial city state of Singapore. It was great to finally be back in Singapore after a three-year pandemic-caused hiatus. It was also great to see this dynamic attractive city again and to enjoy its many colorful sights and attractions. 
I hope many readers saw and read my