Legal News

By Sarah Frier - May 3, 2013 9:05 AM ET International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) is being probed by the U.S. Justice Department over corruption allegations in Poland, Argentina, Bangladesh and Ukraine, adding to bribery charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Justice Department is investigating whether IBM violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the company said in an April 30 filing. [...]

By Argin Chang & Cindy Wang - May 3, 2013 8:06 AM ET MediaTek Inc. (2454)’s China head resigned today as Taiwan authorities probed possible insider trading linked to the company’s planned $3.8 billion merger with MStar Semiconductor Inc. (3697), which would create a business producing 70 percent of the chips used in televisions. Lu Hsiang-cheng is being investigated for insider trading along with four [...]

By Phil Mattingly & Ted Bunker - May 3, 2013 12:14 AM ET The two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings initially targeted the city’s July 4 celebration and attacked last month’s race after building their bombs faster than expected, according to a U.S. official. The information about the brothers’ original plans came from an interrogation of the younger suspect, Dzhokhar [...]

By Chris Strohm - May 3, 2013 12:00 AM ET Google Inc. (GOOG), Twitter Inc. and even Silicon Valley startups are confronting calls by law enforcement following the Boston Marathon bombings to make their products more easily used for surveillance. Police and federal agencies made record levels of requests for data from companies including Google and Twitter in months before [...]

By Jonathan Mahler – May 2, 2013 6:00 PM ET The storm that’s slowly rolling toward Indianapolis quietly gained strength this week with the filing of several devastating documents in a federal court in California. If it stays on course, it’s going to hit with biblical force, reducing the National Collegiate Athletic Association to a heap [...]

By Arun Devnath & Sarah Shannon - May 2, 2013 8:27 AM ET Sohel Rana, owner of Rana Plaza, center, seen wearing police-issue body armour and helmet, is escorted for his appearance at the High Court in Dhaka on April 30, 2013. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) and J.C. Penney Co. were among retailers sending representatives to a meeting near Frankfurt to discuss allying [...]

By Ben Moshinsky - May 2, 2013 8:01 AM ET Stuart Hall, a former host of British Broadcasting Corp. television programs, pleaded guilty to 14 sexual-assault offenses, involving victims as young as nine over a period spanning almost two decades. Hall, who hosted British comedy game show “It’s a Knockout” in the 1970s, will be sentenced next month [...]

By Jeremy Hodges – May 2, 2013 7:11 AM ET Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s deal with U.K. officials that saved the bank as much as 20 million pounds ($31 million) in taxes, according to an advocacy group, will be reviewed by a U.K. court at a two-day hearing starting today. The group, UK Uncut, [...]

By Sangwon Yoon - May 2, 2013 5:29 AM ET North Korea sentenced a U.S. citizen to 15 years hard labor for unidentified crimes committed after he entered the country last year, a verdict that may exacerbate tensions already running high over the regime’s nuclear program. Pae Jun Ho, arrested while “committing hostile acts” against North Korea after he [...]

By Elizabeth Amon – May 2, 2013 12:01 AM ET Morrison & Foerster LLP announced leadership changes, appointing San Francisco partner Brandon Parris and Tokyo partner Randy Laxer as co-chairmen of the corporate department and New York partner Gary Lee and Tokyo partner Dale Caldwell to lead the finance group. “It’s no accident that both [...]

By Linda Sandler – May 1, 2013 1:38 PM ET Liquidating Bernard L. Madoff’s defunct brokerage has cost $774.8 million, including lawyers’ and consultants’ fees and expenses of $737.1 million, the trustee for the firm said in a report. Irving H. Picard, who has been liquidating the firm since Madoff’s December 2008 arrest, has paid [...]

By Joe Schneider & Kit Chellel – May 1, 2013 8:27 AM ET Coda Holdings Inc., parent of the electric-car maker backed by billionaire Philip Falcone, filed for bankruptcy and will seek to sell its assets to a group led by a Fortress Investment Group LLC (FIG) unit. Coda will focus on its energy-storage business, Chief Executive Officer [...]

By Arun Devnath – May 1, 2013 8:16 AM ET Bangladesh officials said the death toll from the factory complex that collapsed last week rose to at least 403, and the European Union warned of trade sanctions in the wake of the nation’s biggest industrial disaster. Rescue efforts are continuing “but it is very unlikely that [...]

By Robert LaFranco & Alex Sazonov - May 1, 2013 7:27 AM ET Alisher Usmanov, Russia’s richest person, moved control of most of his $20 billion fortune last year to a holding company based in the British Virgin Islands, a collection of more than 60 isles 5,600 miles away from Moscow. The company, USM Holdings, controls the billionaire’s most valuable [...]

By Patricia Hurtado - May 1, 2013 12:01 AM ET Level Global Investors LP co-founder Anthony Chiasson, convicted of an insider-trading scheme that reaped $72 million, asked a judge to give him less time in prison than the 13-year term called for by U.S. sentencing guidelines. Lawyers for Chiasson, 39, called such a sentence “draconian” in a, April 29 court [...]

By Linda Sandler – Apr 30, 2013 8:54 AM ET The liquidator of Bernard Madoff’s firm asked a judge to approve $50 million of fees and expenses for his law firm’s work from July 1 through Nov. 30, according to a federal court filing in Manhattan. Irving Picard and his firm, Baker & Hostetler LLP, will [...]

By Andrea Tan - Apr 30, 2013 6:25 AM ET Former UBS AG (UBSN) Executive Director Juerg Buergin was convicted of two charges of having paid sex with an underage prostitute in Singapore, with the judge saying that mistaking a minor’s age isn’t a defense. Singapore’s laws impose a higher standard of care to prevent the sexual exploitation of minors, [...]

By Erik Larson – Apr 30, 2013 12:01 AM ET A judge approved the appointment of the lawyer who represented convicted 1996 Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph to the legal defense team of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler in Boston yesterday approved Federal Public Defender Miriam Conrad’s request [...]

By Elizabeth Amon - Apr 30, 2013 12:01 AM ET Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP opened a Houston office led by former Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP partner Mark Farley, who is one of eight lawyers hired to expand its environmental and workplace safety practices. “One of our practice’s priorities has been to expand into the health and safety [...]

By Elliot Blair Smith & Phil Kuntz - Apr 30, 2013 12:01 AM ET  Rebecca Gonzales’s position was one of 43,000 jobs J.C. Penney Co. cut last year. Photographer: Tim Gilpin via Bloomberg Former fashion jewelry saleswoman Rebecca Gonzales and former Chief Executive OfficerRon Johnson have one thing in common: J.C. Penney Co. (JCP) no longer employs either. The similarity ends there. Johnson, 54, [...]