In May 2020, one of the most anticipated and watched television shows was Season 4 of Killing Eve. For those who have not seen this award-winning British comedy-drama, it’s about Eve (but not All About Eve), a British intelligence investigator. She becomes obsessed with Villanelle, real name, Oksana Astankova (a psychopath assassin for a mysterious group called The Twelve). Villanelle, in turn, becomes obsessed with Eve. It is a cat-and-mouse game involving rulemaking, rule-breaking, good guys, bad guys, and those in between, much like securities enforcement cases. However, in our world, while we don’t have assassinations by poisonous homemade perfume or by necktie, we do have fines and suspensions, and there are important lessons for compliance officers and other securities professionals (but not so much for hired assassins) contained in the enforcement actions from May 2020.

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Additional contributors to this post:

Brian L. Rubin, brianrubin@eversheds-sutherland.com
Sarah Razaq Sallis, sarahsallis@eversheds-sutherland.com

In April 2020, one of the most-watched television shows was the beginning episodes of ESPN’s “The Last Dance,” a 10-part documentary chronicling Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls.  The documentary explores the ups and downs of the Bulls during Jordan’s last year as a Bull, and their successful attempt at a second three-peat.  While the show doesn’t address securities enforcement cases directly (or, frankly, at all), it does provide a lot of lessons that compliance officers and others can think about as they are sitting at home during the age of coronavirus assessing enforcement actions and how they may impact their firms.  Like so much in life, if you watch this series in just the right way, you’ll learn more than you would have expected.

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During March 2020, one of the most streamed shows was Tiger King, a documentary about “Joe Exotic” a/k/a Joseph Allen Schreibvogel a/k/a Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, a “zoo owner [who] spirals out of control amid a cast of eccentric characters in this true murder-for-hire story from the underworld of big cat breeding:’1 Thus, Tiger King has much in common with the securities enforcement matters from March:  fraud, broken rules, sanctions, and (arguably) eccentric characters.  One big difference, of course, is that last month’s enforcement matters did not involve cat breeding, big or small. (We can’t make any promises about April’s enforcement actions.) Thus, the March enforcement matters present important lessons for broker-dealers and investment advisers (as well as important lessons for zoo owners, assuming that the zoo is an outside business activity).

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