Bite-Sized Business Law
Looking for the latest in legal business news?
Get a breakdown of the top stories in business law from industry leaders on the front lines with Bite-Sized Business Law. Host Amy Martella takes a closer look at the latest corporate happenings through interviews with the attorneys, legal experts, public figures, and scholars behind the news to distill business law’s biggest stories into bite-sized portions.
This is your chance to go further into the world of business law and stay up to date with legal cases and industry trends.
Corporations impact us all, leading changes that extend far beyond business to shape the economy, public policy, technology, and beyond. Looking at the big picture, Amy discusses not only the underlying issues in business ethics and legal cases leading the biggest stories but also sparks thought-provoking discussions on where the law should be headed.
Amy is the Executive Director of the Corporate Law Center at Fordham University School of Law. Her background ranges from big law to government to tech startups, allowing her to offer an insider’s perspective of the issues that shape corporate actions, large and small. Covering crypto regulation to securities fraud, AI’s impact to Elon Musk’s pay package, Bite-Sized Business Law covers it all with guests of varying viewpoints to provide the nuanced analysis needed to tackle complex problems.
Whether you're looking for the latest in legal insight on intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions, business ethics or legal cases in the business law world, you’ll find it here. Enjoying a thoughtful perspective on the news stories of the moment, Bite-Sized Business Law examines big issues and delivers them in small doses.
Bite-Sized Business Law is a project by the Corporate Law Center at Fordham Law. The Center serves as a hub for scholars, professionals, policymakers, and students to engage in the study, discussion, and debate of current issues in corporate law. The Center focuses on aspects of corporate law, corporate compliance, antitrust law, and securities regulation. Through initiatives like the Mergers and Acquisitions seminar and the Securities Litigation and Arbitration Clinic, students actively engage in real-world research and cases, bridging the gap between classroom learning and practical application in the legal field.
Bite-Sized Business Law
Inside Insider Trading with Stephen Fishbein
Go inside this most infamous financial crime with guest Stephen Fishbein, who has argued some of the most influential insider trading cases in modern history. Almost everyone, no matter your knowledge base, has an opinion about insider trading. And most peoples’ opinions are that it’s evil. But do you know exactly what insider trading is (not even Congress has defined it) and how you are affected by it? To help us dissect insider trading law and explain why we need to recalibrate our thinking around how we prosecute this white-collar crime, distinguished trial lawyer and partner at A&O Shearman, Stephen Fishbein, joins us. Stephen begins by explaining how his early career as a federal prosecutor serves him in the work that he does today in private law. Stephen describes the law’s ever-changing definition of insider trading, why Congress has yet to provide its own definition of insider trading, Dirks v. SEC’s establishment of the baseline, how United States v. Newman changed the law, and how the Blaszczak cases revealed a different side of insider trading. We also learn about shadow insider trading and the misappropriation theory, how political ambitions inside prosecutors’ offices have shaped insider trading law in America, what the law looks like in the rest of the world, and the dangers of not doing enough research on insider trading for you and your business. To end, we take a philosophical detour to debate whether insider trading is inherently good or bad and our guest shares his thoughts on what policymakers need to be doing more of to change the way insider trading is policed.
Key Points From This Episode:
- Stephen Fishbein's professional background and how he ended up at A&O Shearman.
- How his experience as a prosecutor influences the work that he does today.
- Understanding the main features of insider trading under Rule 10b-5.
- The basics of insider trading law as established in Dirks v. SEC.
- How (and why) United States v. Newman changed the law.
- Why Congress has thus far been reluctant to provide its own definition of insider trading.
- The Blaszczak cases: a different type of insider trading.
- The correlation between shadow insider trading and the misappropriation theory.
- How political ambitions inside the U.S. Attorney's Office have shaped insider trading law.
- Insider trading law in other countries.
- Whether insider trading is right or wrong on a philosophical level.
- What American lawmakers need to be thinking more about with regard to insider trading.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Stephen Fishbein