This article discusses preparation of a 'State of the Firm' report, which provides owners with an appraisal of the firm's prior years and planning for the coming period.
Even though 2007 has come and gone, it is not too late ' it is never too late ' to think about tax planning and tax issues affecting your law firm. What still can be addressed now in 2008 that can impact your tax return for 2007? What tax issues can be addressed that can impact 2008? This article provides a list of items to review internally with your financial team and externally with your tax adviser.
Buying assets out of a bankruptcy case represents one of the best ways to profit from financial distress. However, just as there is no typical bankrupt company, there is no typical asset sale in a bankruptcy case. Bankruptcy and distressed company investing, while potentially lucrative, is also complex and oftentimes contentious.
After the enactment of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, some confusion has arisen as to whether Congress' failure to specifically incorporate the Means Test into §707(a) prohibits courts from considering a debtor's income, ability to pay, and lavish lifestyle in non-consumer bankruptcy cases under the 'bad faith' standard or otherwise.
Although venture debt financing is in the midst of a strong rebound, there are signs that the recovery might not last. Some of the conditions that caused a swift decline in venture lending earlier in the decade have resurfaced, threatening the growth of this form of financing.
With trillions of dollars to keep watch over, the last thing we need is the distraction of costly litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs or "patent trolls"), companies that don't make any products but instead seek royalties by asserting their patents against those who do make products.
Insiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.
At the Oscars in March, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand made “inclusion rider” go viral. But Kalpana Kotagal, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll had already worked for months to write the language for such provisions. Kotagal was developing legal language for contract provisions that Hollywood's elite could use to require studios and other partners to employ diverse workers on set.
This article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.
While the DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is still in its early stages and cybersecurity regulations are evolving, whistleblower plaintiffs have already begun leveraging the FCA to pursue alleged noncompliance with government cybersecurity requirements.
