California Corporate & Securities Law

If someone told my younger self that someday people would take photographs with their phones, I would have wondered where you would insert the film.^* Today, the question would be "What is film?" When I headed the Department of Corporations in the...

Last summer, bankers and the lawyers who advise them breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals  upheld a U.S. District Court's opinion that notes in a bank syndicated loan were not securities.Kirschner v. JP...

California Corporations Code Section 25118(b) provides an exemption from the state's usury limitations for loans. The exemption is subject to several conditions. One condition is the existence of either a preexisting relationship or a level of...

Meredith Ervine recently wrote about reverse stock splits and Nasdaq listed issuers. A reverse stock split is the "go to" solution for many listed issuers whose share prices fall below the minimum continued stock exchange listing requirements....

Part 5 of the California Corporate Securities Law of 1968 sets forth a number of fraudulent and prohibited practices.  One of these practices is to "to offer or sell a security in this state, or to buy or offer to buy a security in this state, by...

Is the issuance of shares upon exercise of a stock option distinguishable from the issuance of the option? The answer under California's Corporate Securities Law of 1968 may surprise some. Corporations Code Section 25017 adopts a unified view of...

Recently, I wrote about the ruling in Cress v. Nexo Financial LLC,2023 WL 6609352 (Oct. 10, 2023). Today's post covers a different issue addressed in that case - to what extent does California's securities law preclude claims under California's...

Securities law practitioners know that Section 5(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 generally makes it unlawful to sell a security unless a registration statement is in effect, or the security or the transaction is exempt. Regulation D is a series of...

The many California laws are intended to protect borrowers.  The California Financing Law, for example, provides that it is to be liberally construed to, among other things, "protect borrowers against unfair practices by some lenders, having due...