Tag Archives: Samuel H. Chang

Economic Sanctions: Developments and Considerations for Board Members

by Chase D. Kaniecki and Samuel H. Chang

U.S. sanctions policy in the first year of the Biden administration saw both change and continuity. As expected, the administration sought to cooperate with allies to impose multilateral (rather than unilateral) sanctions, focused on human rights abuses and opened the door for a new nuclear deal with Iran. At the same time, the administration continued to focus on virtual currencies and on combating illicit cyber activities relating to ransomware, and clarified (and in some respects expanded) sanctions issued under the Trump administration targeting Chinese companies deemed to be part of the Chinese military-industrial complex.[1]

In 2022, boards of directors should be aware of continued regulatory focus on virtual currencies and ransomware, potential divergences and conflicts across new global sanctions regimes and potential sanctions developments relating to Russia, Iran and China.

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Headwinds and Shifting Priorities: Beyond the Numbers in the SEC Enforcement Division’s 2019 Annual Report

by Robin M. Bergen, Matthew C. Solomon, Alex Janghorbani, Jenny Paul and Samuel H. Chang

On November 6, 2019, the SEC’s Division of Enforcement released its annual report (the “Report”) describing its enforcement actions from fiscal year 2019.[1] Like prior reports, the Report quantifies the Division’s activities in a number of ways and discusses priority areas going forward. The Report also brings front-and-center certain challenges the Division has faced—including difficulties navigating recent Supreme Court decisions that call into question the constitutionality of the SEC’s administrative proceedings and the agency’s ability to obtain disgorgement, as well as the impact of the government shut-down and general resource constraints.

Notwithstanding these challenges, the Report somewhat surprisingly cites a 7% increase from last year in so-called “standalone” enforcement actions[2]—the true metric of the Division’s enforcement footprint because they exclude actions such as issuer delistings that entail little to no investigation. Although the Division brought cases in some areas where it had not been active for some time (including the first standalone Regulation FD case since 2013) and several of the settlements highlighted in the Report plainly resulted from substantial investigations, it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions regarding regulatory intensity from numbers alone in light of the Division’s ongoing initiatives and shifting enforcement priorities. To take one example, actions against investment advisers and investment companies in FY 2019 nearly doubled from the year before, but this increase was largely attributable to 95 settlements that resulted from self-reports in the SEC’s Share Class Selection Disclosure initiative. Continue reading →