SEC Awards Record Payout of Nearly $50 Million to Whistleblower

SEC

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced a nearly $50 million whistleblower award to an individual who provided detailed, firsthand observations of misconduct by a company, which resulted in a successful enforcement action that returned a significant amount of money to harmed investors.  This is the largest amount ever awarded to one individual under the SEC’s whistleblower program. The next largest is a $39 million award to an individual in 2018.  Two individuals also shared a nearly $50 million whistleblower award that same year.

As set forth in the Dodd-Frank Act, the SEC protects the confidentiality of whistleblowers and does not disclose information that could reveal a whistleblower’s identity. read more »

Bernard Madoff fails to win compassionate release from prison

REUTERS

A federal judge on Thursday rejected Bernard Madoff’s request to be released early from prison because he was dying of kidney failure, saying the swindler has never fully accepted responsibility for his massive, decades-long Ponzi scheme.

Circuit Judge Denny Chin, who called Madoff’s crimes “extraordinarily evil” when imposing a 150-year sentence in June 2009, wrote that while Madoff’s failing health was “most unfortunate,” compassionate release was unwarranted.

“When I sentenced Mr. Madoff in 2009, it was fully my intent that he live out the rest of his life in prison,” Chin wrote. “Nothing has happened in the 11 years since to change my thinking.”

The judge called Madoff’s fraud “one of the egregious financial crimes of our time.” read more »

If it’s illegal, ‘don’t tell me’: chicken probe ensnares a CEO

DETROIT NEWS

After years of talk, the feds have finally pounced: Big Chicken, they say, has been fixing prices. It’s one of the stranger examples of alleged market-rigging in a long history of cases – and an unusual one in that the chief of a company this big is actually facing criminal charges and as many as 10 years in prison. The charges the U.S. Justice Department laid out Wednesday in its indictment appear to document executives at competing companies colluding to share pricing and bidding information from 2012 through 2017 in the cut-throat world of commodity chicken. read more »

Rare Stock Tweak During Pandemic Adds Millions to a C.E.O.’s Potential Payout

NEW YORK TIMES

Raytheon Technologies, one of the country’s biggest defense contractors, recently cut salaries for thousands of employees as the pandemic crimped business. Around the same time, it also quietly made a change to the pay package of its chief executive, Gregory J. Hayes, that could increase his future income by millions of dollars.

But some analysts said the change undermined Raytheon’s commitment to use pay to keep executives’ interests in line with those of shareholders. Publicly traded companies have come under pressure to structure stock-related compensation in a way that creates incentives for executives to improve long-term performance and not just seek to enrich themselves in the short term. read more »