Welcome to Allen & Overy’s Investigations Insight blog, sharing with you our views and insights into the latest trends, risks and developments in financial services investigations
SEC Creates Cyber Enforcement Unit
17 October 2017 Kurt Wolfe
The Enforcement Division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently announced the formation of a dedicated “Cyber Unit” that will focus on detecting and prosecuting cyber-related misconduct. (1) The announcement follows several statements by high-ranking SEC officials that stress the programmatic importance of cyber enforcement. For example, in a recent interview with Reuters, › Read More
Whistleblower Update: SEC announces whistleblower award to a government agency employee
25 August 2017 Kurt Wolfe
The SEC recently approved a $2.5 million whistleblower award to “an employee of a domestic government agency whose whistleblower tip helped launch an SEC investigation and whose continued assistance enabled the SEC to address a company’s misconduct.” The award is noteworthy because of the source of the tip—a government employee—and because it is a first-of-its-kind › Read More
Hard lessons from the English court on legal professional privilege
09 August 2017 Stacey McEvoy
Financial institutions engaged in cross-border business are increasingly at risk of being caught in the middle of a complex web of internal, regulatory and criminal investigations as well as civil litigation and employment claims when something has gone wrong. These may be conducted simultaneously or at different times, but they will often arise out of › Read More
Global cartel enforcement: Where is it heading in 2017?
17 July 2017 John Terzaken
Depending on how you choose to read the mid-year statistics, 2017 is either trending towards record high or record low fine totals for global cartel enforcers. Fine totals in the first half of 2017 are at USD1.64bn. But this figure is heavily influenced by nearly USD1bn in fines the European Commission re-imposed on air cargo › Read More
11 July 2017 Sarah Hitchins
A lot of time has been spent by some firms managing conduct and performance issues under the UK Senior Managers and Certification Regime (the SMCR) over the past 15 months. In our second blog post looking at these issues (the last one is available here), we highlight key areas that firms should not lose sight › Read More