This week, Manatt has a guide on “How to Handle Confidential Investigations of Bank Activities,” published in the ABA Banking Journal. The guide explains how banks should handle potentially suspicious transactions identified during a safety and soundness examination. The guide stresses that while not every suspicious transaction warrants a full outside investigation, those involving “significant employee or customer negligence or misconduct, or violations of law or regulations” likely require such an investigation. The guide explains the requirements for planning, conducting, and ensuring regulatory compliance throughout the investigation.
Last week, Gibson Dunn published its “2012 Year-End Securities Enforcement Update,” including some interesting findings. Keeping pace with last year, the SEC filed 734 enforcement actions extracting more than $3 billion in penalties and disgorgement. The update notes, however, “the SEC confronted significant challenges in litigating previously filed enforcement actions against individuals in cases related to the financial crisis.” These challenges aside, the SEC significantly increased actions against investment advisors and broker-dealers, bringing 147 and 134 cases against each, respectively. The update breaks down the enforcement actions, explaining in detail the types of entities and conduct likely to raise the ire of the SEC.
Among other tax changes, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 extends the 100 percent capital gain exclusion for “qualified small business stock.” This exclusion originally was implemented as part of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, but only excluded from capital gains tax 50 percent (in some cases 75 percent) of gains from the sale of qualified small business stock. The Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 increased the exemption to 100 percent and increased the time frame in which the deduction applied. The recent Taxpayer Relief Act extended the exemption period to January 1, 2014. In a recent Client Alert, Latham & Watkins explains the requirements of “qualified small business stock” and the benefits and limitations of the exclusion. The Client Alert is available for download here.