DROPLETS

The U.S. Department of Justice, together with its National Fraud Enforcement Division, has announced the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program (WHIP), a three-year pilot under which qualifying tips earn fixed awards of $10,000 to $30,000. The published headline indicates the payments are made before conviction, a point that would materially alter the incentive for insiders to report rather than stay silent. The development matters to major-firm clients with government contracts, healthcare billing operations, or other regulatory exposure because the prospect of a cash reward can raise tip volume against companies and individuals, put pressure on internal reporting channels and privilege positions, and change the economics of internal versus external referrals. Two uncertainties are worth flagging: the available reporting does not set out the program's full eligibility criteria, award tiers, or whether rewards attach to specific offences such as False Claims Act matters, and the pre-conviction characterisation derives from the alert's own headline rather than quoted programme terms. T

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The SEC has proposed amendments to Rule 17a-7 that would reopen cross trading for registered investment companies, most consequentially by restoring most fixed-income securities that fell out of scope once the Rule 2a-5 valuation standard made "readily available" quotations a Level 1 requirement effective 8 September 2022. The proposal would allow pricing either at the price used in the fund's next NAV calculation (NAV Pricing) or at a price reasonably representing current market value drawn from unaffiliated pricing sources, including pricing vendors, broker-dealer quotes and electronic platforms, subject to periodic reasonableness reviews. It would also permit de minimis payments to unaffiliated parties for clearing, settlement, custody, recording and reporting, and require a pre-trade, best-interest determination by the adviser for each participating fund, separate from price adequacy.

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HRSA's revised 340B Rebate Model Pilot requires covered entities to buy 21 drugs from 10 manufacturers at WAC at point of sale and then claim manufacturer-administered rebates beginning January 1, 2027, reversing three decades of point-of-sale discounts. On October 9, 2026, the American Hospital Association, Maine Hospital Association and several safety-net hospitals sued HHS and HRSA in the District of Maine, alleging the design is arbitrary and capricious under the APA because the agencies did not weigh administrative costs, cash-flow strain and operational impacts, and seeking emergency injunctive relief.

The landscape shifted on July 21, 2026, when the D.C. Circuit affirmed that 340B permits rebate models and that manufacturers cannot unilaterally implement them; an earlier pilot was preliminarily enjoined in December 2025, and HHS later dismissed its appeal, prompting vacatur of the underlying notices.

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On October 15, 2026, the Department of Justice's National Fraud Enforcement Division and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General announced a coordinated policy on voluntary self-disclosures in healthcare fraud matters, according to Goodwin Procter. The announcement indicates that the two enforcement bodies have moved toward aligned treatment of self-disclosures rather than handling them independently — a recurring source of uncertainty for companies and executives weighing whether to report suspected fraud to one agency, the other, or both.

The significance here is procedural rather than plainly substantive. The available reporting describes the announcement but does not spell out the policy's terms: how the agencies will sequence their reviews, what credit a disclosing entity can expect, or whether a submission to one agency is treated as a disclosure to the other. Until the policy text is published, its practical effect on disclosure strategy should be treated as unconfirmed.

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The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has joined other circuits in holding that ERISA fiduciary-breach claims need not be administratively exhausted before being brought in federal court, according to a Mayer Brown alert published 22 October 2026. The material provided does not name the case or docket number, so the panel, disposition, and any limits on the holding should be confirmed against the slip opinion.

Exhaustion has been a standard early-stage defense in ERISA stock-drop and related securities class actions brought on behalf of pension plans whose trustees are accused of breaching fiduciary duties over plan investment decisions. Defendants have routinely moved to dismiss for failure to exhaust plan remedies; removing that requirement in one circuit erases a recurring motion-to-dismiss argument and may redirect filings toward that court.

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The Federal Trade Commission filed a proposed settlement on October 2, 2026, resolving its Robinson-Patman Act lawsuit against Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits, LLC, the largest wine and spirits distributor in the United States. The case concerns the price-discrimination statute that sits inside the Clayton Act and is enforced by the agency, not private plaintiffs.

Robinson-Patman enforcement has been infrequent in recent practice, so a settlement involving the country’s biggest beverage distributor is likely to be read closely by antitrust counsel. Sophisticated clients in wholesale distribution, wine and spirits, food, and other consumer-goods sectors will want to understand how the agency frames discriminatory pricing, promotional allowances, and cost-justification defenses in a negotiated resolution with a large, sophisticated respondent. Because the filing is a proposed settlement, the specific injunctive obligations, monitoring provisions, and any monetary or injunctive relief remain subject to change before the matter concludes, and the agency has not published a summary of

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Norton Rose Fulbright reports that on September 30 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California approved a settlement between a coalition of 12 states and Paramount Skydance, ending the states' attempt to block Paramount's $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery under Section 7 of the Clayton Act. The states filed State of California v. Paramount Skydance Corp. on July 13, and the merger closed on October 6, so the settlement resolved rather than decided the merits; the source does not describe the settlement's terms, any conditions, or monitoring obligations.

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On September 29, 2026, Judge Valerie Caproni of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York preliminarily enjoined the New York Attorney General from enforcing Section 3 of N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 340-b, the Donnelly Act provision enacted in October 2025 that makes it unlawful for residential landlords to set or adjust rents, renewal terms or occupancy levels based on recommendations from software performing a "coordinating function." RealPage's facial First Amendment challenge succeeded: the court treated algorithmic pricing recommendations as commercial speech subject to Central Hudson, accepted the State's interest in preventing algorithmic collusion as substantial, but found the reasonable-fit showing "bare bones" and identified a less restrictive alternative — limiting the ban to software relying on non-public data from horizontal competitors. Section 2, which bars facilitating no-compete agreements among landlords through coordinating software, was not enjoined. The order is not limited to RealPage, but it is preliminary: as of October 20, 2026 the State had not

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Per Akin Gump's Trump executive order tracker, a presidential determination under Section 303 of the Defense Production Act of 1950 determines that domestic petroleum production, refining and logistics capacity are essential to national defense, waives statutory requirements under Section 303 to accelerate capacity expansion, and authorizes the Secretary of War (as the tracker describes it) to make purchases, commitments and provide financial support for related projects. The underlying document is posted on govinfo.gov and the White House site.

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California's COMPETE Act amends the Cartwright Act to create state-law prohibitions on single-company monopolization, adding a route to challenge firms with substantial market power beyond what federal antitrust law reaches. Faegre Drinker advises that companies holding significant share in any market — expressly including labor markets — should not rely solely on federal case law when evaluating loyalty discounts, tying, self-preferencing and exclusive dealing arrangements, because California law now supplies its own framework for single-firm conduct.

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According to a Morgan Lewis alert, on October 1, 2026 the US Securities and Exchange Commission proposed significant changes to the custody frameworks for registered investment advisers, registered investment companies and business development companies, including new pathways for crypto asset custody. The alert does not set out the operative rule text, the compliance date or the comment deadline, so the precise scope — which custody models would be permitted, what safekeeping standards would apply to digital assets, and how existing third-party custodian arrangements would be treated — remains unverified from this source alone.

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Holland & Knight's October 21 alert builds on its earlier note that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed seven data center laws on September 21, 2026, which will change how new data centers are reviewed, how they are powered and how they are supplied with water. The current alert turns to the municipal layer, framing the question as pause or playbook: whether Bay Area cities freeze new entitlements while the state framework settles, or issue local rules that condition approvals on power, water and environmental review. This alert does not itemize the specific cities or the operative provisions, so those mechanics remain unconfirmed in this source.

Why sophisticated counsel and clients care: for data center developers, real estate investors, utilities and technology tenants, the municipal approval calendar is now a binding constraint on site selection, capital deployment and lease commencement. Power availability, water supply and review timelines convert directly into schedule risk, carrying cost and valuation, and they sit alongside grid, rate and permitting exposure.

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On October 7, 2026, Treasury announced its first civil penalty under the Outbound Investment Security Program (OISP, 31 C.F.R. Part 850): $200,000 against Amidi LLC, the Plug and Play Tech Center parent, for failing to notify Treasury of a $92,478 April 2025 investment by its Chinese subsidiary in Shanghai Qiongche Intelligent Technology Co., a robotics, AI and embodied-intelligence company. Treasury said it identified the deal through routine compliance and market monitoring and chose a notification failure rather than a prohibited transaction or a large deal.

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Per Sullivan & Cromwell's October 22, 2026 memo, the SEC proposed amendments on October 1, 2026 to the Investment Company Act and Investment Advisers Act custody rules, creating an express federal framework for crypto custody. The proposal would permit state trust companies to act as crypto custodians subject to initial and annual diligence, and allow adviser self-custody only where no qualified custodian is available, with private-key controls requiring dual authorization including a management person, independent control reports, and added board oversight for regulated funds. It would also add an exception for advisers with discretionary trading authority, including non-DVP settlement of loans and privately offered securities; ease audit requirements, including dropping PCAOB-registration conditions for accountants and extending fund-of-funds delivery deadlines; and expand broker-dealer custody options for funds while clarifying BDC reliance. The proposal would redesignate Rule 206(4)-2 as Rule 223-1 and, according to the memo, leaves uncertificated-loan relief unaddressed. It foll

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A Chicago federal district court, in Coinbase Financial Markets v. Raoul consolidated with a second federal action (the full caption is not identified in the available reporting), appears to have granted prediction market operators a significant win on state licensing while leaving state taxation largely available. The reported outcome suggests state licensing regimes may not preempt the federal framework governing event contracts, but that whether a given platform's structure is taxable turns on how the contracts are designed and classified. The drafting distinction is the practically important one: taxability, fee flows and platform structure all follow from how a product is built.

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Per a Morgan Lewis alert republished on Oct. 22, 2026, the SEC has approved FINRA's amendments to Rule 2210, the rule governing communications by member firms with the public. The amendments would permit broker-dealers to include projected performance and targeted returns in communications concerning securities, securities portfolios, asset allocations and other investments, areas where such figures were previously restricted. Firms relying on the new permission would, per the source, need a reasonable basis for any projection and must document the basis and assumptions used.

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