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Peter Chan

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Peter K.M. Chan is a member of Baker McKenzie’s North American Financial Regulation and Enforcement Practice, which provides our clients with a full range of regulatory advice and enforcement counseling. Peter brings two decades of experience at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to his litigation and counseling work. His tenure at the SEC, as well as a stint as Special Assistant US Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois, have given Peter experience with civil and criminal matters. At the SEC, Peter served as assistant regional director in the Chicago regional office, where he led investigations and litigations of high-profile enforcement cases. In the course of his SEC career, he handled corporate issuer disclosure and reporting violations, financial fraud, auditor independence violations, insider trading, broker-dealer misconduct and failure to supervise cases, hedge fund and investment company fraud, and Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley violations. As the head of the Municipal Securities and Public Pensions Unit at the SEC's Chicago office, he oversaw cases involving municipalities and public pensions throughout the Midwest, including disclosure failures by states, cities, and underwriters in municipal bond offerings; pay-to-play and public corruption; and securities fraud victimizing municipalities and public pensions. Peter also served in national leadership roles within the SEC's Enforcement Division. Peter acted as national leader of the Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation (MCDC) Initiative. He also served as co-chair of the Priorities and Resources Subcommittee of the Division of Enforcement Advisory Committee and was one of the original architects of the SEC Financial Reporting and Audit Task Force. Peter's experience in criminal securities fraud cases includes serving as Special Assistant US Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois in a criminal investigation into market abuse by a Chicago broker-dealer, resulting in guilty pleas by several senior executives at the firm. In 2014, Peter received the SEC's prestigious Paul R. Carey Award for his [e]xceptional personal commitment and effectiveness as a member of the Division of Enforcement.

Under the Biden Administration, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to be aggressive in bringing enforcement actions against alleged corporate wrongdoers. In fact, the stage is already set for a broad range of SEC enforcement activities in the corporate arena based on actions the SEC brought in 2020.…

Please join us for a new weekly video series, hosted by Baker McKenzie’s North America Government Enforcement partners Tom Firestone and Jerome Tomas.

This weekly briefing is available on demand and will cover hot topics and current enforcement actions related to white collar crime and criminal investigations in the US and abroad to arm you with the information you need to start your business week.

As one of the largest global law firms, we will call upon our exceptionally deep and broad bench of white collar experts throughout the world and particularly in the commercial hubs of Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America to join our weekly discussion series.

On 1 February 2021, FINRA issued its 2021 Report on FINRA’s Examination and Risk Monitoring Program (“FINRA Report”) and a bit more than a month later, the SEC’s recently renamed Division of Examinations issued its own 2021 Examination Priorities (“Exam Priorities”). Each of these documents is quite long, with the FINRA report at 44 pages and the Exam Priorities document at 36 pages, and although there are some differences in focus and scope, we did find some common themes, which we have chosen to highlight in what we hope will be a helpful summary.

Join Baker McKenzie regulatory and enforcement practitioners as we navigate this uncertain time and work together through the challenges ahead. We offer practical advice and real-time analysis of the changing landscape across the United States, Europe and Asia. Webinar Series: The New Framework for Investment Adviser Marketing In this 4-part…

Baker McKenzie’s Government Enforcement Practice Group would like to wish you a Happy New Year. We have all taken some time off for the holidays, and a lot has happened in the interim. Perhaps most significantly, Congress passed, over President Trump’s veto, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA). The most ballyhooed aspect of the NDAA, from a white-collar criminal law standpoint, has been the de facto elimination of anonymous shell companies — The Corporate Transparency Act, which is discussed below. However, the NDAA also included a number of other key provisions buried in the text, which are certain to assist the Government in its prosecution of white collar crime as well as increase compliance obligations on businesses. We have put together this note to clients and friends for the purpose of quickly updating you on these developments in a single document.

Baker McKenzie’s Government Enforcement Practice Group would like to wish you a Happy New Year. We have all taken some time off for the holidays, and a lot has happened in the interim. Perhaps most significantly, Congress passed, over President Trump’s veto, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA). The most ballyhooed aspect of the NDAA, from a white-collar criminal law standpoint, has been the de facto elimination of anonymous shell companies — The Corporate Transparency Act, which is discussed below. However, the NDAA also included a number of other key provisions buried in the text, which are certain to assist the Government in its prosecution of white collar crime as well as increase compliance obligations on businesses. We have put together this note to clients and friends for the purpose of quickly updating you on these developments in a single document.

Financial regulatory and enforcement momentum focusing on environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) issues is building up from recent activities by US, EU and UK financial regulators.  As a result, we anticipate that asset managers and financial intermediaries will increasingly seek to obtain and analyze ESG-related data and information from companies…

While the SEC may seek disgorgement, it may not, under the guise of disgorgement, seek a remedy beyond traditional equitable principles

In a much anticipated ruling, the United States Supreme Court held today in Liu v. Securities and Exchange Commission that a disgorgement award that does not exceed a wrongdoer’s net profits and is awarded for “the benefit of investors” is “equitable relief” permissible under 15 U. S. C. §78u(d)(5).[1] In reaching its decision, the Court analyzed categories of relief “typically available in equity,” concluding that “equity practice [has] long authorized courts to strip wrongdoers of their ill-gotten gains.”[2]  However, in vacating the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and remanding for further proceedings, the Court left open the questions of whether disgorgement awards not paid to victims can be consistent with the statutory requirement that such a remedy be imposed “for the benefit of investors,” and whether concepts of equity contemplate any circumstance under which a joint-and-several award of disgorgement would be appropriate.

Based on public statements, including a recent speech discussing the operation of the Division of Enforcement’s COVID-19 Steering Committee (Enforcement speech), it is clear that the SEC Enforcement Staff (the Staff) is already thinking ahead to the types of enforcement investigations and actions that may follow the COVID-19 Crisis. In doing so, the Staff likely will draw on its experience following the 2008 global financial crisis (2008 Crisis) to identify potential patterns of misconduct that occur during periods of extraordinary market volatility and financial stress. Below we discuss the various areas that the SEC Enforcement Division is currently focused on, as well as our analysis of the enforcement actions arising out of the 2008 Crisis, with a particular focus on the asset management industry.

SEC 2020: Expect SEC Enforcement to Cast Wide Net on Corporate Disclosure This is the second installment in our series of year-end analyses of the year in securities regulation and enforcement. Based on our ongoing analysis of SEC enforcement actions in 2019, we expect the SEC’s Division of Enforcement to…