SEC Awards Over $1.25 Million to Whistleblower

SEC

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced an award of over $1.25 million to a whistleblower whose significant information prompted the agency to initiate a cause examination and bring an enforcement action that resulted in the return of millions of dollars to harmed investors.

“The whistleblower’s expeditious reporting alerted the agency to previously unknown securities violations,” said Jane Norberg, Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower.  “This whistleblower’s vigilance and prompt reporting helped the agency move quickly to protect investors, resulting in the return of millions of dollars to harmed investors.” read more »

Robinhood under investigation by SEC, FINRA for handling of day-long March outage, report says

BLOOMBERG

Robinhood Markets has catapulted ahead of its online brokerage rivals with a smartphone app that has attracted an army of young investors. Yet with the company’s rise has come a litany of problems: trading outages, angry customers and regulatory probes.

Over the first half of the year, U.S. consumer protection agencies received more than 400 complaints about Robinhood -- roughly four times more than competitors like Charles Schwab Corp. and Fidelity Investments’ brokerage unit. The grievances, obtained via a public records request to the Federal Trade Commission, depict novice investors in over their heads, struggling to understand why they’ve lost money on stock options or had shares liquidated to pay off margin loans. read more »

Theater Operator Sues Insurers That Denied It Coronavirus Payments

NEW YORK TIMES

Jujamcyn Theaters, the operator of five Broadway houses, asserts that it was wrongfully denied insurance coverage after the pandemic forced it to shut down.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, is the latest challenge to the insurance industry’s refusal of coverage for the deluge of business losses experienced during the pandemic. read more »