The SEC charged an automotive manufacturing company, two of its subsidiaries and its former CEO (collectively, the "Defendants") with defrauding U.S. investors by making a series of deceptive claims about the company’s "clean diesel" fleet while issuing billions of dollars' worth of corporate bonds and other securities. In a Complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, the SEC alleged that Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft ("Volkswagen") issued over $13 billion in bonds and asset-backed securities in the U.S. markets while senior executives were aware that

U.S. prudential regulators adopted an interim final rule to add certain Brexit-related exceptions from swaps margin requirements. According to the prudential regulators ( i.e., the Federal Reserve Board, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, FDIC, Farm Credit Administration, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency), the new provision is intended to preserve the status quo for "legacy" swaps in the event of a "no-deal" Brexit. The new rule provides that certain swaps will not lose their "legacy" status ( i.e., excluded from the scope of margin rules) as a result of changes made in response

The U.S. Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") designated six Russian individuals and eight entities for "continued and ongoing" actions against Ukraine. OFAC said that the action targets individuals and entities for their alleged role in Russia's "unjustified" attacks on Ukrainian naval vessels and supporting illegitimate separatist government elections in Ukraine. This action complements sanctions undertaken by the EU and Canada. As a result of OFAC's designations, all property and interests in property of the designated individuals and entities are blocked, and U.S

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency updated the "Recovery Planning" booklet of the Comptroller's Handbook. The handbook covers examination procedures. The revised version of the booklet replaces and rescinds the first version. The updates to the booklet include changes to the enforceable guidelines with respect to recovery planning standards for covered national banks, federal savings associations and federal branches. In particular, (i) the average total consolidated assets threshold for applying the guidelines to banks is increased from $50 billion to $250 billion and (ii) the

SEC Director of the Division of Corporation Finance William Hinman underscored the importance of providing specific disclosure on issues such as Brexit risk and sustainability. In remarks at the Annual Institute on Securities Regulation in Europe, Mr. Hinman said that companies that provide generic disclosures ( i.e., that Brexit presents a risk and that the outcome is unpredictable) fail to disclose adequately to investors the specific potential impact of such risks. Mr. Hinman identified questions that the SEC will consider when assessing Brexit-related disclosure in 2018 annual reports: "Is