Tag Archives: Jr.

Recent Government Bank Failure Reports Point to Increased Regulation and Examination Scrutiny

Editor’s Note: The NYU School of Law Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement (PCCE) is watching the recent banking crisis and failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank. In this post, lawyers at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP analyze the reports released by the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, and GAO, and the NYDFS.

by Derek Bush, Hugh C. Conroy, Jr., Patrick Fuller, Lauren E. Semrad, Julia A. Knight, Megan Lindgren, Rishi Kumar, and Abby Shamray

Photos of the authors

From top left to right: Derek Bush, Hugh C. Conroy, Jr., Patrick Fuller, and Lauren E. Semrad.
From bottom left to right: Julia A. Knight, Megan Lindgren, and Rishi Kumar.
(Photos courtesy of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP)

In late April, several banking regulators and the Government Accountability Office released reports analyzing factors that contributed to the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, while at the same time suggesting areas of forthcoming supervisory focus and regulatory change.[1] The “FRB Report,” led by Federal Reserve Board (“FRB”) Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr, analyzes the supervision and failure of SVB Financial Group and Silicon Valley Bank (together, “SVB”).[2] The “FDIC Report,” led by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (“FDIC”) Chief Risk Officer, and the “NYDFS Report,” led by the New York Department of Financial Services (“NYDFS”) Office of General Counsel, examine the supervision and failure of Signature Bank.[3] The “GAO Report” focuses on how the responsible bank regulatory agencies regulated and supervised SVB and Signature Bank, and how the agencies responded to the March 2023 turmoil.[4]

These reports offer a detailed look into the bank supervisory process and provide important insights into regulatory and supervisory changes that may be on the horizon. In this post, we summarize our expectations for potential regulatory and supervisory developments.

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Second Circuit Rules Foreign State-Owned Bank Does Not Have Sovereign Immunity From Criminal Prosecution

by Carmine Boccuzzi, Jr., Jonathan KolodnerRahul MukhiBoaz Morag, Rathna RamamurthiHyatt Mustefa, and Matthew Slater 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently held in U.S. v. Halkbank[1] that a Turkish state-owned bank did not have sovereign immunity from criminal charges that it engaged in a conspiracy to launder $20 billion of Iranian oil and gas proceeds in violation of U.S. sanctions.

While the district court had joined other Circuit courts in ruling that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”) does not confer on foreign sovereigns immunity from criminal prosecutions, the Second Circuit declined to decide that unsettled issue, except insofar as it held that the FSIA is not the only source of criminal jurisdiction over a foreign sovereign.  Instead, the Second Circuit assumed arguendo that the FSIA confers immunity in the criminal context and held that the conduct at issue would fall under the FSIA’s commercial activity exception to immunity. 

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Supreme Court Substantially Reduces Government’s Ability to Seek Criminal Forfeitures 

by Sharon Cohen Levin, Daniel P. Kearney, Jr., Sarah Mortazavi, and Anuradha Sivaram

On June 5, 2017, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in Honeycutt v. United States (PDF: 99 KB) (No. 16-142), holding that a criminal defendant can be held liable to forfeit only crime proceeds the defendant personally obtained, and cannot be made jointly and severally liable for proceeds acquired by a co-conspirator. The decision upends decades of nearly uniform precedent from the federal courts of appeals,[1] and will likely have wide-ranging effects on the government’s ability to obtain criminal forfeiture. While Honeycutt is a narcotics case, the procedures in the forfeiture statute in question apply to all criminal forfeitures, including criminal forfeiture in cases involving securities fraud, healthcare fraud, corruption, insider trading, economic sanctions, mail fraud and wire fraud.  Continue reading