As reflected in my recent post, last week I attended the PLUS D&O Symposium in New York. The sessions were great, but based on some comments of various panelists, there are some items for follow-up – for example, references that panelists made that need to be checked out, items that panelists suggested we should pursue, and so on. I have run down these various items, and I link to them below. I emphasize that these items will be of interest even if you didn’t attend the Symposium. I have also included below several other items from around the Internet as well.Continue Reading PLUS D&O Symposium Follow-Up and Other Notes

Earlier this year three large U.S. banks failed in a sequence of events that has been called The Banking Crisis of 2023. While federal regulators acted decisively and forcefully to prevent the bank failures from triggering a contagion event, the underlying problems that caused the three banks to fail continued to trouble many other U.S. lending institutions. Among the banks that faced continued challenges and continuing questions is the California-based bank Pac West, which in July 2023 announced that as a way to try to deal with its woes it was being acquired by the Bank of California. Now, a plaintiff shareholder has filed a securities class action lawsuit against Pac West and certain of its directors and officers alleging misrepresentations in connection with the events surrounding the other banks’ failures ad leading up to the July merger. The new lawsuit is the latest example of the ways in which ongoing issues in the banking sector are leading to securities class action lawsuit filings. A copy of the new complaint can be found here.Continue Reading Regional Bank Hit with Banking Crisis-Related Securities Suit

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is one of those singular events, charged with implications and fraught with dangerous possibilities, but that is also still so recent that it is difficult to discern what it ultimately will mean. Earlier this week, in an excellent webinar presented by the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at the

After a run of several years where numerous banks failed each year, no banks failed in 2018, and only four failed in 2019. The low number of bank failures last year, and the absence of any bank failures the year before, clearly are signs that the economy is strong and the banking industry generally is profitable. But the banking sector is notoriously volatile and historically registers all of the economy’s ups and downs vividly. Is it possible that the current banking sector calm itself foreshadows trouble ahead? That is the question asked in a January 6, 2020 Wall Street Journal article entitled “Few Bank Failures Could Be a Warning Sign for U.S. Financial System” (here).
Continue Reading Few Banks Failed Last Year – Is That a Problem?

fdic2013As the global financial crisis has receded further into the past and as other issues have crowded to the top of the agenda, the remaining vestiges from the credit crisis have faded into the background. But though the peak of the crisis is now nearly seven years behind us, the crisis remnants continue to work their way through the legal system. In particular, a large part of the wave of failed bank litigation that the FDIC filed against the former directors and officers of many of the U.S. banks that have failed continues to grind on, as evidenced in the FDIC’s latest professional liability litigation update, which the agency posted on its website on July 28, 2015 (here).
Continue Reading Meanwhile, Back at the FDIC Failed Bank Litigation Ranch

According to the FDIC’s latest Quarterly Banking Profile (here), as of September 30, 2013, there were 6,891 federally insured banking institutions, down from 6,940 at the end of the second quarter and down from 7,141 as of September 30, 2012. There were 8,680 banking institutions as recently as December 31, 2006, meaning that

The lead article in the November 17, 2010 Wall Street Journal reported that the FDIC is conducting 50 criminal investigations of directors, officers and employees of failed banks. Given that (as of November 19, 2010) 314 banks have failed since January 1, 2008, this report suggests that the FDIC is investigating possible criminal charges in