Among the companies with D&O litigation in recent years arising from sexual misconduct allegations was the clothing and consumer products company L Brands. The parties to the various legal proceedings arising out of the allegations have reached a settlement in which L Brands has agreed to adopt a number of management and governance measures; in order to fund these initiatives, the company has committed to funding of $90 million over the course of five years.…

Trevor Milton, the founder, former Chairman, and largest shareholder of electric vehicle company Nikola Corporation, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan. The indictment, which alleges that Milton “engaged in a scheme to defraud investors” by making “deceptive, false, and misleading claims” about “nearly all aspects” of the company’s business, presents criminal charges against Milton for two counts of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud. Milton has also been named…

In the third in a series of podcasts discussing the impact of the Biden Administration on the world of directors’ and officers’ liability and insurance, my good friends Carl Metzger of the Goodwin Procter law firm and Rob Yellen of Willis Towers Watson and I recently recorded a session that is now available in a July 22, 2021 post on the PLUS Blog, here. In this 28-minute long, best-of-the-series podcast, we discuss the Biden…

There are a lot of different ways you might look at securities class action litigation settlement data. You might, for example, look at average or median settlement amounts. You might look at the data in the aggregate. Or you could look at it geographically – say, according to the U.S. state in which the case was pending. That is exactly what ISS Securities Class action Services has done. In its latest report, entitled “The Largest…

As this blog’s readers know, one of the important corporate governance developments in recent months has been the heighted focus on board diversity. As part of this focus, several states have enacted statutory requirements addressing board diversity. The following guest post from Jessie K Liu, Susan Saltzstein, Lauren Aguiar and Tansy Woan of the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP law firm take a look at the various state and regulatory initiatives, and provide…