AFWL Charged for Foreign Bribery and Violating the Books and Record Provision. On Jun 25, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) charged[1] Amec Foster Wheeler Limited (AFWL) for bribing officials at a Brazilian state-owned oil company Petrobras to obtain a contract from which AFWL unjustly profited approximately $17.6 million. AFWL also violated the book…
Companies acquire, or merge with, other companies for a variety of reasons, namely: to create economies of scale/scope and cost/revenue synergies, to acquire promising technology or other intellectual property or intangibles, to capture more market share, to diversify a business portfolio, or to create tax benefits (such as acquiring net operating losses to carry forward…
Fraudulent Cherry-picking. On Jun 17th, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) charged[1] Ramiro Jose Sugranes, a licensed financial adviser who had been in the financial market for over twenty years, for fraudulent cherry-picking. What Is Cherry Picking? According to Investopedia cherry picking is the process of choosing investments and trades by following other investors…
Raising Capital Properly – A Case Study On June 29, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) charged Matthew J. Skinner (“Skinner”) of Santa Clarita, California, and five entities he owns and controls, for conducting four unregistered and fraudulent real estate investment offerings between 2015 and 2020. In these offerings, Skinner raised more than…
Investor Disclosure Laws – A Case Study On May 3, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) charged Under Armour Inc. with “misleading investors as to the bases of its revenue growth and failing to disclose known uncertainties concerning its future revenue prospects.” In 2015 and 2016, Under Armour engaged in what is known as…
The SEC reopened the comment period for Universal Proxy Rules and accepted comments until June 7th, 2021. The reopened comment period is regarding the Commission’s proposal of amending the proxy rules to permit shareholders to vote by proxy for any combination of candidates for the board of directors, as they could if they attended the…
The SEC Charged Promoters of BitConnect. On May 28th, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced[2] its charge against five individuals with promoting a global unregistered digital asset security offering in 2017 and 2018. The five defendants, Trevon Brown, Craig Grant, Ryan Maasen, Michael Noble, and Joshua Jeppesen, belonged to a promoter network working…
On June 11th, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announce[1] the charge against Radjabli for orchestrating three individual fraudulent schemes. The amount of money involved in each scheme increased as Radjabli went further. For example, in his third scheme, he took advantage of being a former practicing dentist and unlawfully raised approximately $20 million…
On June 7th, 2021, the Security and Exchange Committee (“SEC”) announced[1] a charge against Holly Hand, a former senior project manager at Neuralstem, a biopharmaceutical company currently known as Palisade Bio, Inc., and her intimate Chad A. Calice with violating the insider trading policy. Hand provides Calice with Neuralstem’s unpublic information, resulting in Calice avoiding…
What are IPOs? What are IPOs – IPO stands for Initial Public Offering. This signifies a private corporation going through a stock distributing process to offer shares to the public. The shift from private to public is pivotal for many corporations and can reveal the value of the company to private investors. What has…
