The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance updated Section 141 of "Securities Act Rules: Questions and Answers of General Applicability." The updates pertain to questions 141.03, 141.04 and 141.05, which deal with Securities Act Rule 147 ("Part of an Issue," "Person Resident" and "Doing Business Within" for purposes of Section 3(a)(11)). See: Revised Question 141.03; New Question 141.04; New Question 141.05.

On April 9, the Department of Justice ("DOJ") and the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") announced that Hewlett-Packard Company ("HP") had agreed to pay approximately $108 million to settle criminal and civil charges that the company's foreign subsidiaries violated the anti-corruption, internal controls, and books and records provisions of the FCPA. The DOJ and SEC settlement papers are available for download below. The settlements involved approximately $2.7 million in payments made by the company's foreign subsidiaries to government officials in Russia, Poland and Mexico. The DOJ and

In Goldman Sachs Co. v. City of Reno, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the forum selection clauses in the parties' contracts superseded any obligation to submit to FINRA arbitration . The Court noted that other courts had split on the issue of whether a broker-dealer could contract out of FINRA arbitration. Lofchie Comment : The FINRA rules should be expressly amended so that arbitration is not mandated, unless agreed by the parties, in a situation where a broker-dealer is acting as an underwriter. The purpose of imposing a mandatory arbitration requirement on

A recent indictment in the Eastern District of Virginia highlighted efforts by the IRS and DOJ Tax Division to identify and prosecute those who engage in tax fraud and money laundering, including by targeting the foreign investment advisors, lawyers and other professionals who assist them. In the indictment, the U.S. government alleged that Joshua Vandyk, an American, and Eric St-Cyr, his Canadian business partner, helped undercover agents posing as U.S. clients to conceal and disguise the nature, location, source, ownership and control of $200,000, which were represented to be the proceeds of

The Managed Funds Association ("MFA") submitted a comment letter to the Financial Stability Board ("FSB") and IOSCO in response to the FSB-IOSCO consultation paper on assessment methodologies for nonbank and non-insurer globally and systemically important financial institutions ("SIFIs"). In the letter, MFA encouraged the FSB and national systemic risk regulators to analyze hedge fund information using a quantitative-based metric, which MFA believes will demonstrate that hedge funds do not pose systemic risk. Additionally, MFA responded to specific proposals in the consultation paper