Elon Musk and Tesla Prevail in "Funding Secured" Trial

Elon Musk Found Not Liable in Trial Over Tweets Proposing to Take Tesla Private

A jury rejected investor claims that Elon Musk violated federal securities law when he tweeted in 2018 about potentially taking Tesla Inc. increase; green up pointing triangle private, handing a major win to the billionaire chief executive.

The nine-person jury said the investors who brought the class-action case failed to prove that Mr. Musk hurt them by tweeting about a possible deal.

Activision Blizzard to Pay $35 Million for Failing to Maintain Disclosure Controls Related to Complaints of Workplace Misconduct and Violating Whistleblower Protection Rule

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Activision Blizzard Inc., a video game development and publishing company, agreed to pay $35 million to settle charges that it failed to maintain disclosure controls and procedures to ensure that the company could assess whether its disclosures pertaining to its workforce were adequate. The company also settled charges that it violated an SEC whistleblower protection rule.

According to the SEC’s order, between 2018 and 2021, Activision Blizzard was aware that its ability to attract, retain, and motivate employees was a particularly important risk in its business, but it lacked controls and procedures among its separate business units to collect and analyze employee complaints of workplace misconduct. As a result, the company’s management lacked sufficient information to understand the volume and substance of employee complaints about workplace misconduct and did not assess whether any material issues existed that would have required public disclosure. Separately, the SEC’s order finds that, between 2016 and 2021, Activision Blizzard executed separation agreements in the ordinary course of its business that violated a Commission whistleblower protection rule by requiring former employees to provide notice to the company if they received a request for information from the Commission’s staff.

FTX Inquiry Expands as Prosecutors Reach Out to Former Executives

Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing a growing array of people tied to Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed cryptocurrency empire, including his father, his brother and former colleagues, as part of a rapidly expanding investigation into one of the biggest American financial crime cases in more than a decade, according to 13 people with knowledge of the inquiry.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has created a special task force to pursue its investigation into the collapse of FTX, the crypto exchange founded by Mr. Bankman-Fried.

More than half a dozen prosecutors, led by Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, are building the criminal case and tracking down the billions of dollars in customer money that Mr. Bankman-Fried has been charged with misappropriating.

US Senate Banking Committee to Hold ‘Crypto Crash’ Hearing This MonthThe crypto industry’s 2022 dramas will again fall under the U.S. Senate’s microscope this month when the Senate Banking Committee holds a Feb. 14 hearing to examine financial system protections from the dangers seen in digital assets.

The panel is calling the Valentine’s Day hearing “Crypto Crash: Why Financial System Safeguards are Needed for Digital Assets,” according to a hearing schedule released Friday. Its position as one of the first issues to be addressed by the lawmakers demonstrates the urgency of crypto issues in Congress.