Message from the Chairs

We invite all members of the Committee to attend the American Bar Association’s Annual Meeting in New York City August 7–12, 2008. Our Committee will be presenting two important and informative programs, which we hope you can attend:

Hot Topics and Recent Changes in Securities Arbitration before FINRA (the newly combined Company, formerly the NASD and NYSE arbitration forums)

Sandra D. Grannum (Davidson & Grannum, LLP), Co-Chair of the ABA Arbitration Subcommittee, was appointed and serves on the National Arbitration and Mediation Committee of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Securities Dealers. This Committee, composed of industry, claimant and public members, is responsible--among other things--for reviewing/recommending revisions to the NASD arbitration rules, regulations, and procedures, and for recommending appropriate rules, regulations, and procedures to the Dispute Resolution Board to govern the conduct of all arbitration, mediation, and other dispute resolution matters before FINRA. She will be joined by three distinguished Securities Arbitration practitioners: Brian N. Smiley (Smiley Bishop & Porter LLP), Steven B. Caruso (Maddox Hargett & Caruso, P.C.) and Joel E. Davidson (Davidson & Grannum, LLP).

When:
Saturday, August 9, 7:00 am – 8:15 am

Where:
Essex House, Central Park West Room, 2nd floor

Sox at Six: Is It Working?

A panel of leading attorneys, industry participants and former regulators will look back over the first six years of regulation under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“SOX”). The panel will examine the effectiveness of the Act as balanced against the burdens of compliance, impacts on industry, markets, and professions, and proposals for reform of the Act. Have the benefits of SOX been worth the substantial costs of compliance, estimated by some to have averaged over $1.8 million annually per public company? Are SOX requirements driving initial public offerings overseas or otherwise lessening the competitiveness of U.S. markets? Is SOX more important now than ever before in preventing abuses in financial reporting? These and other timely and controversial issues will be addressed.

The panel will be moderated by John K. Villa of Williams & Connolly LLP, Washington, D.C., one of the nation’s pre-eminent professional liability attorneys. Panelists include (a) Harvey J. Goldschmidt, Dwight Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, and former SEC Commissioner, 2002-2005, (b) Joshua R. Hochberg, McKenna Long & Aldridge, Washington, D.C., former Chief of Fraud Section and Acting U.S. Attorney for the Enron Investigation, Department of Justice, Criminal Division, (c) John J. Geron, Managing Director, Navigant Consulting, Inc., New York, NY, and (d) Carolyn K. Cheng, Associate General Counsel, Deloitte LLP, New York, NY. The program is co-sponsored with the Professional Liability Litigation Committee, Commercial and Business Litigation and Federal Regulation of Securities Committees.

When:
Friday, August 8, 3:45 pm – 5:15 pm

Where:
The Hilton New York, Regent Parlor, 2nd Floor

We hope to see you in New York. We encourage you to become more actively involved in the work of the Committee by contacting either one of us, or one of the subcommittee chairs.

Susan L. Saltzstein
Barrie L. Brejcha
Co-Chairs, Securities Litigation Committee