Siemens A.G.'s intended claim against insurers that relates to a far-reaching bribery scandal could turn rates in the directors and officers insurance market, which is already braced for major losses from U.S. subprime-related claims, experts say.

Siemens has notified a consortium of companies that insured the engineering group's executives of its intention to file a claim, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The Munich and Berlin-based conglomerate did not specify the amount of the claim in last month's notification, but Siemens has a coverage limit of $391 million USD, the source said.

Read the full article here on the Business Insurance website.

The insurer Aflac has become the first U.S. company to give shareholders a say on pay - a vote on top management's compensation. And in their first advisory vote Monday, they signaled that the compensation committee was doing a fine job.

Slightly more than 93 percent of shareholders approved of the $11.96 million compensation package that Daniel Amos, Aflac's chief executive for the last 18 years, received last year. Only 2.5 percent voted against.

"As he makes more money, I make more money," said George Nader, a shareholder in West Point, Georgia, who has been accumulating Aflac shares for more than 30 years. "The dividend keeps increasing and the shares have done well. The man at the top is thinking of the shareholders, and he deserves to be compensated for that."

Read the full article here on the International Herald Tribune website.

Interpublic Group of Cos. says it reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on securities fraud charges.

As part of the settlement, subsidiary McCann-Erickson will pay a $12 million civil penalty.

A Chancery Court judge on Tuesday approved the settlement of a shareholder lawsuit against directors and executives of Tyson Foods but reserved judgment in a dispute over attorney's fees.

The settlement approved by Chancellor William Chandler III calls for Don Tyson and Tyson Limited Partnership, the company's largest shareholder, to pay the company $4.5 million.

Read the full article here on ArkansasBusiness.Com.

A Canadian judge ruled that a group of almost 2,000 Canadians alleging they were implanted with defective defibrillators can sue the company, according to media reports.

Guidant, which was purchased by Natick, Mass.-based Boston Scientific in 2006, has operations in Arden Hills, Minnesota.

Prior to the acquisition, Guidant had begun a recall of 100,000 potentially defective implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). But the lawsuit claims that Guidant didn't tell doctors about the defects until years after the problems were discovered.

A class-action lawsuit against Deutsche Telekom opened Monday with thousands of disgruntled shareholders seeking up to $126 million from Europe's biggest telecom operator. Some 16,000 investors are seeking compensation in the case for what they claim were falsehoods regarding the company's third initial public offering tranche in June, 2000.

One of the complaints is that at the time of the offering, Bonn-based Deutsche Telekom had already started negotiations with U.S. mobile phone company Voicestream, now T-Mobile USA. German giant Telekom bought Voicestream in 2001 for about 34 billion euros ($53.4 billion) in a move highly criticized at the time. The unit has since become a key driver of growth. Another complaint is that the value of some of Telekom's real estate assets had been inflated in pamphlets sent to shareholders before the offering.

Read the full story here on CNN.Com’s World Business Site.

The subprime-mortgage mess will likely tighten the coverage and cost of the insurance policies that cover executives, corporations, and corporate boards for losses and legal fees in securities lawsuits, an attorney predicts.

Indeed, directors' and officers' liability insurance coverage could cost more and be harder to get as the number of subprime-related lawsuits wend their way through the federal courts, according to Koorosh Talieh, a lawyer who represents corporate D&O insurance policyholders.

Read the full article here on CFO.Com.

American International Group Inc (NYSE:AIG - News), the world's largest insurer, has filed a complaint in New York Supreme Court against former Chief Executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and six other former directors and officers, accusing them of breaching their fiduciary duty.

In the complaint, filed on Wednesday, AIG alleges Greenberg, former Chief Financial Officer Howard Smith and five others breached their fiduciary duty through "misappropriation of a special block of AIG shares worth approximately $20 billion in 2005."

Read the full story here on the Yahoo! Finance website.

Prominent attorney Melvyn Weiss has agreed to plead guilty to racketeering in a lucrative kickback scheme involving payments to plaintiffs in class-action lawsuits targeting some of the largest U.S. corporations, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Weiss, 72, also will acknowledge that he and others concealed secret payment arrangements that his firm, Milberg Weiss, had with named plaintiffs in the lawsuits, prosecutors said in a statement.

Read the entire story here from the International Herald Tribune.

The FBI is in the early stages of an inquiry into whether company officials misrepresented its financial position and the quality of its mortgage loans, The Wall Street Journal first reported Saturday, citing law enforcement officials and finance executives with knowledge of the development.

The Justice Department is also involved in the investigation into the nation's largest mortgage lender, said the New York Times, which also cited anonymous sources who said they were not authorized to discuss ongoing criminal matters.

"We are not aware of any such investigation," Countrywide spokeswoman Susan Martin told the Times.

Read the full story here on Yahoo! Finance.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reportedly are theorizing that a former finance chief and an ex-controller took part in an accounting fraud to generate fake profits and boost executive bonuses, according to Canada’s Financial Post.

The paper also noted that the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas is continuing its four-year criminal investigation into the accounting practices at the company. Nortel employs about 12,900 people in the United States and its U.S. headquarters are in Richardson, Texas. 

In this clip from the 2008 PLUS D&O Symposium, John Rafferty, Vice President with Hartford Financial Products, sets out a great overview of the issues surrounding the subprime and larger credit crisis that we are facing.  Panelist Bain Head, Senior Vice President with McGriff, Siebels & Williams, then gives her predictions of where the subprime crisis is going, and what the resulting effect on D&O will be.

Please follow the link below for a summary of enforcement and non-enforcement actions by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The report was prepared by Gregory S. Bruch, Gregory F. Monday and Terry D. Nelson, all partners with Foley & Lardner LLP.

The full summary is located here on the Foley & Lardner website.

This is a clip from the 2008 PLUS D&O Symposium held in New York City.  More than 1300 professionals gathered to hear the latest information on the D&O industry.

In this clip, there is an introduction to the topic, and then two questions answered:

What coverage opportunities are there for brokers and underwriters as they approach the private equity industry?

What do you predict for the private equity market five years from now?

Susanne Scalfane with National Underwriter Online News Service has a great article detailing the world of class action lawsuits based on comments made by the opening panel of the 2008 PLUS D&O Symposium.

Read the full article here at the National Underwriter website.

David Katz from CFO.com reports on the keynote address by William Donaldson, former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman and Wednesday Luncheon Keynote at the 2008 PLUS D&O Symposium held February 6 & 7, 2008 at the Marriott Marquis in New York City.

Read the full article behind the comments here on the CFO.Com website.

As reported at CNNMoney.Com, New York authorities are suing 26 banks and two accounting firms that did business with Countrywide Financial, saying the companies failed to ensure the company was being honest with investors.

Experts are predicting that the legal and regulatory issues being fueled by the current subprime mortgage meltdown will dwarf the problems that followed the technology stock bust and the Enron and Worldcom problems. Read the entire article here in the New York Times.

A group of former employees of the Eastman Kodak Company have filed a class action lawsuit seeking nearly 500 million dollars against Morgan Stanley on the grounds that the broker gave them bad advice to retire early and promised them financial security that never materialized.

Four employees are named as plaintiffs, however the member class could number as many as 1,000.

In addition to this class action lawsuit, an arbitration claim making similar allegations on behalf of another 16 former Kodak employees was filed at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s arbitration forum.

NERA Economic Consulting has released a year end report which shows that the 18 month trend of declines in shareholder class actions has definitely reversed course. In an article posted on BusinessWire, the report projects that a total of 207 federal filings will be made by year end, up from 131 filings in 2006. You can read a brief synopsis of the report from BusinessWire by clicking this link.  For more information about this report, you can contact Benjamin Seggerson from NERA.

According to BusinessWeek online, the top business story of 2007 is the state of the U.S. housing market (and related effects on the debt markets worldwide). You can read brief reviews of this and the BusinessWeek to 10 business stories of the year by following this link.

If you're looking for the top D&O story of 2007, Kevin LaCroix, Senior Member of the Management Team at OakBridge Insurance Services has posted his list at The D&O Diary, and interestingly enough his top story is also related to the US housing market.  You can view his list and insightful commentary by following this link.

  February 6 & 7, 2008
Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York

Please follow this link to register.

 

 

In addition to the outstanding panels, PLUS is pleased to present Keynote Addresses from William H. Donaldson, 27th Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (left) and William R. Berkley, Founder, Chairman and CEO of W.R. Berkley Corporation (right).

 

 

PLUS has reserved a limited number of rooms for attendees at the Marriott Marquis Hotel (1535 Broadway). Please make your reservations as soon as possible at 1-800-843-4898 and indicate that you are part of the PLUS block to secure the special rate of $251 plus taxes.

 

Due to the success of previous events, it is expected that registration will be limited in 2008.