Posting will screech to a halt for the rest of this week as SLW heads across the pond for the 2006 ISS Corporate Governance Conference in London. Stuart Grant of the US law firm Grant & Eisenhofer and Hilton Mervis of the pan-European law firm SJ Berwin will join me for a panel on the role of European institutions in US securities class action litigation.

Let me leave you by emptying my "To Blog" folder with these quick hits:

1. How's That Safety Net?

The first checks to defrauded WorldCom investors should be going out shortly in the SEC's $750 million settlement with the company. The first wave of checks will total approximately $150 million, and will provide claimants with a recovery of 2% of their Eligible Loss Amount. Another wave of cash will go out later, and will apparently provide investors with an additional 3% of their Eligible Loss Amount.

The SEC says in its press release that this "shows that even when things go terribly wrong, there is a safety net for injured investors." By my math, this "safety net" would return $5,000 to an investor who had an Eligible Loss of $100,000 in this case.

2. Statute of Limitations Expires in AOL Case

Did you read the Alec Klein's "Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner" yet, which I recommended way back when? If you did you'll be surprised to learn that, according to this article in the Washington Post, the 5 year statute of limitations in the case has now passed, and prosecutors were unable to make a case against any AOL execs other than two mid-level persons.

The article states that

Despite a lengthy investigation by the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia, lawyers involved in the case now say the government will not be able to bring criminal charges against top AOL executives over transactions in which the Dulles Internet service provider and its business partners allegedly sought to artificially boost each other's revenue numbers as the dot-com bubble was bursting in 2000 and 2001.

3. Not Appearing in the SEC Litigation Releases

A Minnesota federal court let the SEC have it last week, ruling that the SEC must actually review documents requested to be released under FOIA before asserting that it cannot release the documents without harming ongoing law enforcement efforts. As discussed in this Dow Jones article, the Court wrote that it

adamantly disapproves of the manner in which the SEC has conducted itself as it relates to Gavin's requests. The SEC has shirked its responsibility by brazenly refusing to conduct a document-by-document review-despite a direct order from the Court.

The SEC told the Court that a review of the requested documents would have cost over $2 million. The Court ruled that the group requesting the documents would be required to pay any such costs.