Some former colleagues of the lawyer who was convicted of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with the “Pharma Bro” case are asking the judge in his case for leniency.

Evan Greebel, formerly of Katten Muchin and Kaye Scholer, could face up to 20 years in prison for his role as outside counsel for Martin Shkreli’s pharmaceutical company Retrophin, according to Above the Law. Prosecutors alleged Greebel assisted Shkreli in using Retrophin’s assets to pay investors in unrelated hedge funds run by Shkreli through the use of phony settlement and consulting agreements and fraudulently backdating agreements.

“But his lawyers — he’s repped by Gibson Dunn — have submitted a sentencing memo asking Judge Kiyo Matsumoto for no jail time,” writes editor Kathryn Rubino. “Attached to the memo are some 180 letters asking for leniency, and quite a few from Greebel’s former Biglaw partners.”

Read the Above the Law article.

Institutional asset managers carry enormous clout across corporate America. So it’s unfortunate that so many of these managers choose to support the status quo for boards, even when investors are ill served, points out The New York Times.

As an example, writer Gretchen Morgenson, discusses the case of Arconic, the industrial metals company that spun off Alcoa in November. Some of its directors are facing a proxy challenge to be decided at the company’s next annual meeting.

Giant hedge fund Elliott Management is behind the challenge, following years of declining sales, rising losses and a subpar stock performance at Alcoa.

As Morgenson explains, “The structure of Arconic’s board — and Alcoa’s before it — is investor-unfriendly. It is what’s known as a classified board, in which directors’ terms are staggered, protecting them from being voted out en masse.”

Read the NYT article.

Double-digit investment returns for little-known New York hedge fund Platinum Partners turned out to be too good to be true, according to federal prosecutors.

The New York Times reports that federal agents arrested Mark Nordlicht, a founder and the chief investment officer of Platinum, and six others on charges related to an alleged $1 billion fraud. It is one of the largest such fraud cases since Bernard L. Madoff’s investment firm unraveled in 2008.

“David Levy, the firm’s co-chief investment officer, was also among those arrested in the morning by agents in Texas, Manhattan and New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City,” writes reporter Alexandra Stevenson. “The men were charged with securities fraud and investment adviser fraud, according to an unsealed indictment filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a parallel civil case.”

Read the NYT article.

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For advisers helping clients plan for retirement, drafting a binding contract may now simply be a cost of doing business, reports Kenneth Corbin for FinancialPlanning.

“That contract, through which advisers must pledge to act as fiduciaries and make recommendations in the best interests of their clients, is at the heart of a new fiduciary regulation from the Department of Labor, which is aiming to mitigate the harm to investors from conflicted retirement advice,” he explains.

Advisers should learn how to incorporate the best-interest contract exemption into their practices if they help clients plan for retirement.

In his article, Corbin writes that there’s a streamlined version of the contract requirement in the DoL’s rule, which would ease the compliance burden for so-called level fee advisers, firms that receive fees that don’t vary based on the type of product or investment that they are recommending.

Read the article.

Global finance firm Burford Capital announces the appointment of Craig Arnott as a managing director, effective immediately.

Arnott will be based in London and will have as his primary focus Burford’s litigation financing activities in the UK, continental Europe and the Asia − Pacific region.

In a release, the firm says Arnott has multijurisdictional experience in large, complex litigation from his work at some of the world’s leading firms. Currently a barrister in Sydney, Australia, he was formerly partner and Head of the Competition and Antitrust Law Group at Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson in London.

He previously practiced with Ashurst in London and with Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. As a Rhodes Scholar, Arnott attended Balliol College, the University of Oxford, where he earned both his BCL and D.Phil degrees. Before attending Oxford, he graduated from the University of Queensland with First Class Honours in both Law and History, with University Medals in both.

He replaces Nick Rowles-Davies (including as a director of Burford Capital PLC, Burford’s bond — issuing subsidiary), who resigned from Burford to pursue other interests.

Christopher Bogart, Burford’s chief executive officer, said: “We’re very pleased to welcome Craig to Burford. He brings over 20 years of commercial law experience in multiple legal jurisdictions that will assist us in meeting the increasingly global demands of our clients. Moreover, Craig has advised Burford on matters in Australia for some time, and has in the past practiced law with both Aviva Will and me.”

Financial regulators have proposed new rules limiting the incentive pay of employees and other service providers at financial institutions, report Mark Jones and Robert L. Tian of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.

“The new rules seek to establish general requirements applicable to the incentive-based compensation arrangements of covered persons working in covered institutions. Covered persons are any executive officers, employees, directors or principal shareholders who receive incentive-based compensation at a covered institution. Additional restrictions apply to senior executive officers and significant risk-takers,” they write.

Their article discusses the prohibition of excessive compensation, appropriate performance measures, effective controls, approval by the board of directors, and disclosure and record-keeping.

Read the article.

Thomson Reuters is offering a complimentary copy of the 2016 edition of Practical Law’s study, Reverse Break-Up Fees and Specific Performance: A Survey of Remedies for Financing and Antitrust Failure.

This year’s edition analyzed all 85 merger agreements entered into in 2015 for debt-financed acquisitions of U.S. reporting companies in deals valued at $100 million or more. The study provides a detailed guide to the negotiation of remedies for buyer breach by:

• Examining how deal characteristics such as the size of the transaction and the profile of the buyer affect the negotiation of enforcement and monetary remedies.
• Reviewing the sizes of reverse break-up fees in leveraged deals as percentages of deal value and as multiples of the target company’s break-up fee, and compares reverse break-up fees that cap the damages payable by the buyer against those that do not.
• Analyzing other techniques for allocating risk in debt-financed transactions, including the buyer’s financing covenants, the definition of the lenders’ marketing period, and the agreement’s “Xerox” provisions.

New this year, the study contains a supplement analyzing antitrust-triggered reverse break-up fees and other mechanisms for allocating the risk of antitrust failure. For this inquiry, the study surveyed all 49 agreements in the Practical Law What’s Market M&A database for 2015 that contained a reverse break-up fee payable for antitrust failure. These included 27 agreements for the acquisition of a US reporting company in deals valued at $100 million or more and 22 publicly filed agreements for private M&A deals involving the acquisition of a US company or business valued at $25 million or more.

Download the study and receive free temporary access to Practical Law online resources.

Second Genome, Inc., a privately-held biopharmaceutical company developing novel medicines through innovative microbiome science, has closed an oversubscribed Series B investment round with $42.6 million in financing, co-led by Pfizer Venture Investments and Roche Venture Fund.

The company was advised in the financing by Latham & Watkins LLP corporate partner Mark Roeder and associate Alexander White in the firm’s Silicon Valley office.

The round brings the combined total investment in the company to $59 million. The round also included new investors Digitalis Ventures, Adveq, LifeForce Capital, MBL Venture Capital, and Mayo Clinic, as well as Series A investors Advanced Technology Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, Seraph Group, and individual investor Matthew Winkler, Ph.D.

The funds will be used to further expand the Second Genome Microbiome Discovery Platform in a range of indications associated with barrier function, insulin sensitivity, and immune regulation. In addition, proceeds from the financing will be used to advance the clinical investigation of SGM-1019, a small molecule inhibitor of a key microbiome-mediated target to address inflammation and pain in ulcerative colitis, through human proof-of-concept studies.

“Our approach to developing novel therapeutics based on secreted functional proteins, peptides, and metabolites from the microbiome is highly relevant to the pharmaceutical industry. The progress made by our team to date has allowed us to attract significant interest from a premier group of investors, including Pfizer Venture Investments and Roche Venture Fund,” said Peter DiLaura, Second Genome’s CEO. “This financing will enable us to accelerate our efforts to scale our unique microbiome discovery platform and reach several major inflection points, including key milestones for the SGM-1019 clinical program and other therapeutic programs.”

In conjunction with the new financing, Elaine Jones, Ph.D., Executive Director of Pfizer Venture Investments, and Carole Nuechterlein, Head of Roche Venture Fund, will join the Second Genome Board of Directors.

“Second Genome has demonstrated early success in accessing the previously overlooked and untapped potential of the microbiome in drug discovery and development,” said Dr. Jones. “The company has developed a unique platform and the deep scientific expertise required to create value by mining the microbiome to build a pipeline of novel therapeutics for a broad range of chronic conditions with high unmet medical need.”

Second Genome‘s Microbiome Discovery Platform combines genomics technologies, computational biology, and phenotypic screening to identify novel proteins, peptides, and metabolites from the microbiome that play a causal role in human disease and wellness.

Strong economic growth coupled with low interest rates resulted in a perfect storm for acquisition finance, with plenty of cheap debt available to fund deals, MergerMarket reports in its Global M&A roundup for 2015 for legal advisors.

During 2015 the value of cash & equity transactions increased to US$ 699.8bn, up 43.5 percent, compared to 2014’s annual total (US$ 487.7bn), reflecting a balance between cheap loans and cash piles on balance sheets.

Law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher holds on to the number one spot for deal value for another year while Latham & Watkins jumps from fourth to second last year. Cravath, Swaine & Moore makes an enormous leap from thirteenth place in 2014 to third in 2015, the report says.

“Attractive tax laws have resulted in Ireland and the UK becoming the most targeted countries by US companies in 2015. Ireland (36 deals, US$ 190.7bn) received the bulk of investment from the Allergan/Pfizer deal, whilst the UK (244 deals, US$ 61.8bn) benefited from the US$ 18.2bn acquisition of Visa Europe by US-based Visa Inc.,” according to the report.

Read the report.

Will you or your law firm practice be affected by this week’s compromise by Congressional leaders regarding taxes and deductions if it becomes law (which is currently anticipated)?

Accountant Steven Bankler has outlined which “Extenders,” both for business and individuals, are being made permanent, and also which “Extenders” are being extended through 2016 and which are extended through 2019.

In an analysis published on his website, he has outlined how those extenders apply to businesses and to individuals.

Read the report.

Gritstone Oncology, a cancer immunotherapy company developing next-generation, personalized cancer therapeutics, has announced a Series A financing of $102 million. The financing will support discovery and development of novel tumor-specific neo-antigen (TSNA) based immunotherapies, with an initial focus on lung cancer, the company said in a release.

Latham & Watkins LLP advised Gritstone Oncology in its formation and the Series A financing with a corporate team led from the firm’s Silicon Valley office by partners Alan Mendelson and Brian Cuneo, with associates Alexander White and Kevin Tsai.

The financing was co-led by biotechnology investors Versant Ventures and The Column Group, with Clarus Ventures alongside. Other investors include Frazier Healthcare Partners, Redmile Group, Casdin Capital, and Transformational Healthcare Opportunity, a special-purpose vehicle for private investors.

“We are honored that this discerning group of investors recognized the tremendous potential that exists both in our approach and our team,” said Andrew Allen, M.D., Ph.D., Gritstone Oncology co-founder, president and CEO. “We believe that this substantial funding, along with our best-in-class expertise, a systematic discovery and development approach, and our commitment to do the scientific heavy-lifting required, will enable us to solve the core challenge of identifying personalized, therapeutic neo-antigens for individual patients.

“Cancer immunotherapy is an exciting area of discovery, and an ability to predict the antigens recognized by T cells that drive tumor elimination is likely fundamental to continuing advances in the field,” said Allen. Gritstone will focus initially on discovering and developing TSNA-based therapies for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).