On May 3, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (collectively, the agencies) released a guidebook aimed at assisting community banks in managing risks associated with third-party relationships (the TPRM Guide). The TPRM Guide builds upon the principles introduced in the third-party risk management guidance for banking organizations issued by the agencies in June 2023 (the June 2023 Guidance, discussed here) as well as the agencies’ community bank guide for conducting due diligence on fintech companies from October 2023 (discussed here) but does not displace or substitute that prior guidance.

In the competitive world of commerce, sellers of goods can enhance their prospects for payment by leveraging a Purchase Money Security Interest (PMSI). This legal claim, when properly perfected, can provide a seller with priority over other creditors, even if those creditors have perfected a lien on the same type of collateral first.

There has been a great deal of press about the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) vote to ban employee non-competition provisions and policies; see our firm’s fuller discussion here. While the FTC describes the rule as a comprehensive ban, it acknowledges that the rule does not apply to regulated financial institutions, and nonsolicitation clauses are still permitted.

In 2023, the digital asset industry demonstrated remarkable resilience amidst significant challenges, including the dissolution of several digital asset financial services companies, numerous bank failures, and a $4.7 billion fine imposed on Binance by the U.S. government. Despite these adversities, the digital asset market rebounded, recapturing over 50% of the market capitalization lost in 2022, bringing the total to $2.59 trillion.

In Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, two critical documents are the disclosure statement and the plan. These documents represent the culmination of a case and provide a roadmap for the debtor’s path forward. A Chapter 11 plan can be a plan of reorganization, where the debtor emerges from bankruptcy as a reorganized entity, or a plan of liquidation, where the debtor’s remaining assets are liquidated and the proceeds are distributed to creditors. The plan outlines how creditor claims will be paid and, in the case of reorganization, provides that a debtor is fully discharged from its prior debts.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA) Enforcement Division recently announced its first settlement involving a firm’s supervision of social media influencers. The respondent, M1 Finance LLC (M1), is a financial technology company that provides self-directed trading to retail investors through its mobile application and website. In connection with FINRA’s targeted exam of M1’s use of social media influencers to acquire new customers, FINRA found that social media posts made by influencers on the firm’s behalf were not fair or balanced, or contained exaggerated, unwarranted, promissory, or misleading claims. According to FINRA, M1 also failed to establish, maintain, and enforce a reasonably designed supervisory system for its influencers’ social media posts, and failed to preapprove and preserve records of these retail communications.

On April 4, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a stay on the implementation of its newly enacted climate impact disclosure rules. This decision is connected to a challenge to the rules currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which is a consolidation of numerous lawsuits that hit the SEC following the rule announcement on March 6. The SEC adopted a scaled-back version of its initial 2022 proposal, requiring large public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions, climate-related risks to their businesses, and the financial harm caused by extreme weather events, in their registration statements and annual reports. The reporting requirements were to be rolled out in stages, with the largest filers beginning disclosures in 2025.