Happy New Year! Here are some of the year-end and start-of-the-year stories for you.
SEC And CFTC Regulatory Priorities To Watch In 2020
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission expect to tackle a busy regulatory slate in 2020. For the chairs of both agencies — Jay Clayton at the SEC and Heath Tarbert at the CFTC — this year could also be their final opportunity to leave their mark given the looming presidential election and potential change in administration.
https://www.law360.com/securities/articles/1228214
While both bodies share certain concerns, including confronting regulatory challenges posed by the growth of digital assets, each have distinct priorities that appear ripe for action in 2020. Lawyers also note that regulators are facing a tight time frame to complete priorities given that the nation’s attention will shift to the presidential campaign by Labor Day.
7 Compliance Items to Watch for 2020
Matt Kelly
Radical Compliance
Welcome to 2020, everyone! This has been a long winter break, but before we return to the grind of emails to answer and staff meetings to avoid, let’s spare a few moments to ponder how the corporate compliance landscape in the coming year.
Without further delay, then: my annual list of compliance issues worth watching in the next 12 months. In no particular order…
http://www.radicalcompliance.com/2020/01/01/7-compliance-items-watch-2020/
My 2020 Legal Market Predictions
Ron Friedmann
Prism Legal
Clickbait titles don’t appeal to me but my original idea for a title here – “Incremental Change in 2020” – just sounded too lame. Unlike many other commentators, I shy away from bold predictions of big changes coming soon. I’ve worked for three decades in the corporate legal market and have witnessed many incremental changes but few dramatic ones. Yet Big Law today does look rather different than it did when I started in the 1980s. The new look, however, flows from many small changes.
https://prismlegal.com/my-2020-legal-market-predictions/
2019 FCPA Enforcement Index
Richard L. Cassin
The FCPA Blog
Last year 14 companies paid a record $2.9 billion to resolve FCPA cases. That includes amounts assessed in resolutions with the DOJ or SEC or both. There were four enforcement actions last year in the mega category — Ericsson at $1 billion, MTS at $850 million, Walmart at $282.7 million, and Fresenius at $231.7 million. Both Ericsson and MTS landed on our list of the ten biggest FCPA enforcement actions of all time.
https://fcpablog.com/2020/01/02/2019-fcpa-enforcement-index/
31 Days to a More Effective Compliance Program –
Day 1| What 2019 Brought to Compliance Programs
Tom Fox
FCPA Compliance & Ethics
2019 was a very significant year for every compliance practitioner and compliance program. Not only was it the year with the single highest amount of FCPA enforcement actions, fines and penalties assessed against corporations but it also saw the greatest number of individual prosecutions. Yet perhaps most significantly there were three noteworthy releases of information by the federal government which directly impacted compliance professionals in 2019. Two came from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and one came from the Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC). These three guidance’s contributed to the continued evolution of what constitutes a best practices compliance program.
http://fcpacompliancereport.com/2020/01/31-days-effective-compliance-program-day-1-2019-brought-compliance-programs/