Legal News

By Eleni Himaras – May 10, 2013 1:44 AM ET Hong Kong’s securities regulator must be able to seek asset-freezing court orders to protect investors, the city’s top court said in rejecting Tiger Asia Management LLC’s claim such action can only be taken after a civil or criminal trial. In such proceedings, the Securities and [...]

By Andrew Harris - May 10, 2013 12:01 AM ET Four men were convicted at a trial involving a money-laundering scheme by the Los Zetas drug gang that included buying, training, breeding and racing horses in the U.S., the Justice Department said. Each of the men was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, a crime [...]

By Greg Farrell, Janelle Lawrence & Phil Mattingly – May 10, 2013 12:01 AM ET A skirmish between the FBI and the Boston police erupted into public view after the bureau sought to rebut a claim that police weren’t aware of a federal probe of the alleged mastermind of the Boston Marathon bombing. At a [...]

By Kit Chellel - May 9, 2013 8:01 PM ET Matthew Jordan, like many Dresdner Kleinwort bankers, was worried about Commerzbank AG (CBK)’s plans to take over the investment bank in 2008. Jordan, Dresdner’s deputy head of equity research, had lost 20 analysts to rivals that year amid uncertainty about the lender’s future. So he was relieved when Dresdner’s [...]

By Laurel Brubaker Calkins & Erik Larson - May 9, 2013 8:27 AM ET Jeffrey Skilling, the convicted former Enron Corp. chief executive officer, may get out of prison in as little as four years if a judge approves a deal with prosecutors over objections by victims of one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history. In exchange for [...]

By Ben Moshinsky - May 9, 2013 7:40 AM ET The U.K.’s accounting watchdog placed KPMG LLP under two separate investigations, examining its audits of a car seller and the conduct of one of its partners. The Financial Reporting Council will investigate whether KPMG “was independent” when it audited the annual accounts of Nottingham, England-based Pendragon Plc (PDG) for 2010 and 2011. [...]

By Nicholas Dunbar - May 9, 2013 4:06 AM ET Stichting Vestia Groep, a Dutch affordable-housing provider that nearly collapsed as a result of losses on derivatives, asked a London court to void 700 hundred million euros ($924 million) ininterest-rate swaps after it was sued by Credit Suisse Group AG. (CSGN) Credit Suisse should have known that the derivatives were [...]

By Elizabeth Amon - May 9, 2013 12:01 AM ET Latham & Watkins LLP is opening a new office in Dusseldorf and hiring four partners from Shearman & Sterling LLP, which announced the closing of two German offices last month. The new partners in Dusseldorf include Harald Selzner, Rainer Wilke and Martin Neuhaus, who have experience in complex [...]

By Chris Dolmetsch – May 9, 2013 12:01 AM ET Golfer Vijay Singh, the winner of the 2000 Masters Tournament, sued the PGA Tour claiming he was publicly humiliated by a suspension for using deer-antler spray before he was cleared of wrongdoing two months later. Singh, the world’s top-ranked player in 2004 and 2005, filed a complaint [...]

By Freeman Klopott – May 9, 2013 12:01 AM ET Senator Tom Libous, a champion of fracking in the New York Legislature, is blocking a bill that would delay drilling for natural gas for at least two years. Passage of the measure would harm the prospects of a real-estate company founded by Libous’s wife and [...]

By James Nash - May 9, 2013 12:00 AM ET More than a decade after Los Angeles started trying to sidestep California’s affirmative action ban, firms owned by white men won 92 percent of the $2.1 billion in contracts awarded by the city, though they’re just 14 percent of the population. A diversity program in place since 2001 has [...]

By Erik Larson - May 8, 2013 9:14 AM ET Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) won a bid to save $100 million in interest payments by carrying out an early call of $1.3 billion in bonds at par after a judge ruled against the notes’ trustee, Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Chesapeake, the second-biggest producer of natural gas in the [...]

By Bob Van Voris & Patricia Hurtado - May 8, 2013 12:01 AM ET An official with Venezuela’s state- owned economic development bank directed its bond-trading business to a New York brokerage in exchange for bribes from two of its employees, U.S. prosecutors said. Maria Gonzalez, 54, vice president of finance at Banco de Desarrollo Economico y Social de Venezuela, Tomas Alberto [...]

By David Lerman – May 8, 2013 12:00 AM ET Democratic lawmakers and victims’ advocates said they will push to strip U.S. military commanders of the power to prosecute sexual assaults after a Pentagon survey found attacks jumped 35 percent over the past two years. The survey released yesterday estimated that 26,000 active- duty troops [...]

By Andrea Tan - May 7, 2013 11:00 PM ET Juerg Buergin, a former UBS AG (UBSN) executive director of operations, was sentenced to four months and three weeks in prison for having sex with an underage prostitute in Singapore. Buergin showed no sign of remorse by standing trial and claiming he was a victim of deception by the girl [...]

By Kit Chellel - May 7, 2013 9:10 AM ET Phil Ivey, nine-time winner of the World Series of Poker tournament, sued a unit of Genting Bhd. (GENT) in London over what he said was 7.8 million pounds ($12 million) of unpaid winnings. Ivey, 37, said he won the money playing the Punto Banco game at Genting’s Crockfords casino in London last year, according to an [...]

By Ben Elgin & Michael Riley - May 7, 2013 8:59 AM ET The U.S. Defense Department is investigating intrusions by Chinese cyber-spies into the computer systems of defense contractor QinetiQ North America, the Pentagon said. For three years, hackers linked to China’s military infiltrated QinetiQ’s computers and compromised most if not all of the company’s research, which includes work on [...]

By Andrew Harris & Phil Milford - May 7, 2013 12:06 PM ET Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Citigroup Inc. (C) and 10 other banks have restrained market competition for credit default swaps in violation of U.S. antitrust law, an Ohio union pension plan contends in a federal court complaint. “The CDS market has been starkly divided between those who control and distort the [...]

By Patricia Guthrie & Joel Rosenblatt - May 7, 2013 12:01 AM ET Witnesses for Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG) testified that heart disease, not a failed robotic procedure, killed a patient whose widow is suing the company over claims that overly aggressive marketing caused surgical errors. Forensic pathologist Eric L. Kiesel yesterday told state court jurors in Port Orchard,Washington, that the patient, Fred [...]

By Erik Larson & Janelle Lawrence - May 7, 2013 12:01 AM ET The 19-year-old man accused of lying to federal investigators probing the role of his college friend Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Marathon bombing was released on bail into the custody of his mother. U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler in Boston yesterday allowed Robel Phillipos released under “strict house arrest.” [...]