On April 15, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced a joint award of just over $50 million to a pair of whistleblowers, which represents the second-largest award in the whistleblower program’s history.  The SEC’s press release noted that the two recipients reported on “violations that involved highly complex transactions [that] would have been difficult to detect” without the information they provided.  This $50 million award continues a record-setting pace for the whistleblower program.  The SEC has now awarded over a quarter of a billion dollars to whistleblowers in the first seven months of fiscal year 2021 (“FY2021”) alone, which kicked off with an award of $114 million in October 2020—the largest in the program’s history.

Following the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) September 2020 amendments to the rules governing its whistleblower program, which we previously discussed in this newsletter, the SEC is on track to shatter its previous records of awards paid out to whistleblowers.  Halfway into its fiscal year (“FY2021”), which started in October 2020, the SEC has already awarded nearly $200 million to whistleblowers, surpassing last year’s record of $175 million paid out to whistleblowers.  And the awards have been sizable:  At the start of FY2021, the SEC issued a record $114 million dollar award; and so far this month, the SEC has already issued two multi-million dollar awards.  If this pace continues, the SEC will be on pace to award in one year the same total amount that it had awarded over the previous nine years, since the inception of the whistleblower program, combined.  In terms of the number of awards paid out, the SEC is also likely to have a banner year:  it has paid out 31 awards so far in FY2021, compared to 39 awards paid out last year.
 

Looking ahead, we preview cases currently pending before the Supreme Court—which have already been accepted for review by the Court—that may be of particular interest to readers of the Need-to-Know Litigation Weekly.  These cases pertain to various topics in Securities, Enforcement, and, as to one, arbitration.