The merger between law firms Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling will be completed by Oct. 13 following the voting process that is to begin on Sept. 28, the firms announced. Ahead of the vote, the firms said they successfully completed "a number of key transaction milestones," including financial and operational due diligence, antitrust clearance filings, and retirement and pension program modifications. Both are global law firms with varying practice areas, including international trade and financial sanctions.
The U.S. should push World Trade Organization members to "revisit what constitutes good and bad subsidies," which may help encourage transparency and improve "enforcement through incentives for compliance and penalties for noncompliance," the Council on Foreign Relations said in a new report.
Steel and aluminum importers should expect the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security to "conduct additional quantity certification reviews and more closely scrutinize the data points included in exclusion requests" following a Government Accountability Office report on the exclusion process, global firm Crowell & Moring said. The firm said importers could also face further scrutiny from CBP, who will be more closely examining Section 232 exclusion claims that are not properly filed.
Defendants in False Claims Act cases still have a valid defense in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in U.S. ex rel. Schutte v. SuperValu "if there is objective ambiguity" in the law and there exists a "genuine subjective belief in the validity of the claim," Akin Gump lawyer Robert Salcido said in a blog post. FCA defendants also have a valid defense if they "acted with mere negligence or inadvertence," Salcido added, explaining the plaintiff must show that the defendant acted with a "substantial and unjustifiable risk."
The U.S. and Mexico have been consulting about U.S. complaints about favoritism to Mexican energy providers for 11 months, with no public movement toward a dispute settlement panel, and Karen Antebi, a former NAFTA negotiator, said she doesn't expect that to change in the next year.
The chairmen of the House Small Business Committee and the House Select Committee on China are asking for a detailed briefing by the end of June on DOJ's efforts to combat Chinese intellectual property theft.
The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in SEC v. Cochran could usher in the end of the agency's in-house court for most cases, including Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matters, according to Richard Cassin, founder of the FCPA blog. Should this happen, Cassin said in a June 12 post, it would be hard to imagine how the SEC could maintain its current level of enforcement activity.
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross carries "profound implications for international trade," Steve Charnovitz, professor of international law at George Washington Law School, said in a blog post.
A U.S.-based multinational medical device company said it may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In a May 2 SEC filing, Stryker said it has hired outside counsel to investigate whether “certain business activities in a foreign country violated provisions” of the FCPA, adding that both the SEC and DOJ have contacted it. The company said it’s cooperating with both agencies. “At this time we are unable to predict the outcome of the investigation or the potential impact, if any, on our financial statements,” Stryker said.
DOJ will look to further crack down on Russian sanctions evasion by zeroing in on overseas investment advisers, hedge funds, law firms and private equity managers that have so far evaded scrutiny, Andrew Adams, head of DOJ's Task Force KleptoCapture, told Bloomberg. KleptoCapture is the interagency group charged with enforcing U.S. sanctions on Russia.