Law and legal issues

The cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the latest casualty of a $2 trillion crash that has wiped out some of the industry’s biggest names and exposed hundreds of thousands of individual investors to steep losses.

Citigroup has won part of its appeal in a discrimination suit brought by a former banker who was laid off after being called “old” at the age of 55.

As Celsius Network’s customer withdrawal freeze enters a full month, the beleaguered crypto lender has paid back a string of debts totaling more than $900 million during the same period to decentralized-finance platforms. 

Securities regulators in Texas and Alabama are expanding their investigations into Voyager Digital and Celsius Network to account for new information arising from the implosions of the two crypto-lending firms. 

After the Supreme Court struck down an Environmental Protection Agency rule, legal observers are wondering how far the justices will go to rein in the authority of financial regulators. A Securities and Exchange Commission proposal on climate risk disclosures could become a test case.

Authentic Brands Group, which owns and licenses brands like Forever 21, has settled its lawsuit against Bolt Financial. The agreement ends months of legal wrangling between the troubled payments startup and its largest active customer, which had claimed that Bolt’s technology was faulty. 

An independent investigation found no evidence of a pact with Wells Fargo’s attorney but omitted mention of the other big questions emanating from the case.

The retail giant ignored fraudsters’ use of its money transfers in consumer scams that cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Walmart called the agency’s lawsuit “factually flawed and legally baseless.”

The lender has been struggling with a series of scandals that have sent its shares to near-record lows, and may face a second criminal indictment in an unrelated case later this year.

The fintech Wise said the Financial Conduct Authority has commenced an investigation into Chief Executive Officer Kristo Kaarmann almost a year after he was fined by HMRC for deliberately defaulting on his taxes.

A panel of FINRA arbitrators unanimously ordered the award against the megabank based on Erin Ann Daly’s claims of gender-based discrimination.

The U.S. Department of Education agreed to erase nearly $6 billion in student loans for borrowers who filed a class action lawsuit against the government after attending for-profit colleges that were found to have misled students.

Court-appointed custodian Alfred Putnam is seeking an extension of nearly three weeks to give more groups time to nominate candidates for a vacant board seat at the Philadelphia bank and solicit proxies from investors before a special meeting.

It took less than a day for Citigroup’s now-infamous payment error to Revlon lenders to come up in the cosmetics giant’s bankruptcy.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating the bank over allegations that it conducted so-called fake interviews with nonwhite and female job applicants, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The prepaid card issuer has now paid a total of $18 million to Republic Bank & Trust, which sued after Green Dot's purchase of its tax-refund business unraveled.

An Oct. 7 trial date looms in a case involving allegations of document destruction. The high-stakes lawsuit could complicate BMO's pending acquisition of Bank of the West.

Though costly, Wednesday’s settlement brings the $11.2 billion-asset company a step closer to resolving legal and regulatory issues that have hampered it since 2019.

Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Patricia Moskal ruled that Orion Federal Credit Union’s acquisition of Financial Federal Bank is legal under Tennessee law. The decision provides a road map for courts in other states to follow for similar M&A deals.

District attorneys in the Golden State are tangling with Credit One Bank over its debt-collection practices. The bank says the prosecutors have overstepped, but Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta argues that the legal action should continue.