Tag Archives: Andrew Hruska

An Even More Powerful DFS?

by Andrew Hruska and Kyle Sheahen

Since its birth in 2011 from the combination of the Banking and Insurance Departments, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) has used all of its statutory powers —and then some—to magnify its supervision of financial companies operating in New York State.  A state regulatory agency, DFS has become an extremely active investigator of financial misconduct and, based on the strength of those investigations, has collected over $7.5 billion in fines since 2011.  At the same time, DFS has forced to defend certain actions in court, such as when its Superintendent was sued in 2014 by AIG on constitutional grounds, (See Complaint, Am. Int’l Group. v. New York Dep’t of Fin. Serv., No. 14 Civ. 2355 (AJN) (S.D.N.Y. June 2, 2014)).  Although the suit was resolved with a payment by AIG, the matter nonetheless demonstrated that there may be some practical limits to DFS’s asserted powers.

The latest development came last month on January 17, when Governor Cuomo released the proposed state 2017-18 Executive Budget.  The Budget contains some singular proposed legislation that would meaningfully expand DFS’s powers to enforce its decisions on its own in the state courts and to increase penalties on insurers. Continue reading →

The Law of Large Numbers

by Andrew Hruska

All things come in cycles, and we are now far enough into the current cycle of corporate prosecutions and related regulatory enforcement actions to be able to reflect meaningfully on the amplification of major resolutions in the multi-billion dollar range.  Perhaps we are even able to discern some principles.  As lawyers handling government investigations, we are accustomed to having to derive principles in an important area of the law with undeveloped case law.  On some of the most important issues that lawyers both for defendant companies and for the government confront, there is very little neutral guidance as to appropriate outcomes.  Historically, the surest and most relevant guide has been to look to the major negotiated resolutions to determine the contours of the law on issues from sales of mortgages, to cartel conduct, to foreign corruption, to the extent of economic sanctions.  But those guides are becoming less and less helpful. Continue reading →