Finance

Subscribe to Finance via RSS

Key Takeaway: Domestic reporting companies—meaning entities formed under the laws of any U.S. state or Tribal jurisdiction—have no beneficial ownership information reporting obligations to FinCEN under the final rule.

What happened: On August 14, 2026, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) published a final rule revising its previous rules implementing the Beneficial Ownership Information (“BOI”) reporting requirements of the Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”). The final rule is effective immediately. The final rule makes permanent, and modestly expands, the relief first introduced by FinCEN in its March 26, 2025 interim final rule, which exempted domestic reporting companies (i.e., U.S.-formed entities) from any obligation to report BOI to FinCEN, and exempted foreign reporting companies from any obligation to report BOI with respect to U.S.-person beneficial owners. FinCEN also has said that it will delete the identifying information that companies reported to it about U.S.-person beneficial owners and company applicants, as well as persons who requested a “FinCEN ID” to aid BOI filings. In addition to the rule itself, FinCEN issued related FAQs. FinCEN cited issues of privacy, burden, and the ability to obtain information on the beneficial owners of U.S. companies as reasons for the final rule.

Continue Reading FinCEN Finalizes BOI Reporting Rule: What U.S. Companies Need to Know

What You Need to Know

Key takeaway #1: On August 13, 2026, FinCEN issued a Financial Trend Analysis showing 67,540 Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) reports filed between 2023 and 2025 involved more than $4.9 billion in reported suspicious activity potentially related to human smuggling.

Key takeaway #2: Money services businesses (MSBs) filed approximately 97% of the reports, while depository institutions filed approximately only 3% but accounted for nearly 61% of the total reported suspicious activity.

Key takeaway #3: Financial institutions should consider whether the red flags and typologies highlighted in the FTA are appropriately incorporated into their automated transaction-monitoring scenarios for detecting potentially suspicious human smuggling-related activity.

Continue Reading Following the Money: FinCEN Maps the Financial Footprint of Human Smuggling

Crowell & Moring has joined the International Legal Finance Association’s (ILFA) Industry Partner Program, a network of legal and professional organizations committed to supporting the responsible growth of commercial legal finance. Through the program, partners support ILFA’s work to educate policymakers, courts, regulators, and stakeholders about the value of litigation finance, and advocate for a…

Crowell & Moring attorneys Paul Haskel, John Laird, Scott Lessne, and Paul Muscutt have contributed a chapter to ICLG’s Lending & Secured Finance Laws and Regulations 2026, providing a comprehensive introduction to litigation funding.

The chapter examines the key players in the litigation funding space, the legal and regulatory frameworks governing funding arrangements in…

In an effort to improve market efficiency and to speed settlement, the Loan Syndications and Trading Association (the “LSTA”) has amended its trading documents in order to address concerns that market participants are increasingly failing to make timely payment of the “Purchase Price” with respect to their bank loan trade settlements. Although typically only one or two days late, some delays have been substantially longer, and such failures can understandably prove to be quite costly to loan sellers and disruptive to the market as a whole. The amendments introduce language into the LSTA Standard Terms and Conditions for its suite of trade confirmations (the “Standard Terms”) that requires tardy loan buyers to pay a “Late Payment Fee.” *

Continue Reading LSTA Introduces Late Payment Fees for Loan Trade Transactions

Crowell was proud to serve as a sponsor of the recent New York University School of Law symposium on “Charting the Future of Litigation Finance.” The symposium brought together over 200 leading lawyers, academics, policymakers, and judges for an engaging discussion on the regulatory and policy issues surrounding this rapidly growing area of finance. Crowell partner Kevin Rubinstein spoke on “Nonattorneys Enter the Room: Financier Control and Law Firm Ownership.”

Continue Reading Crowell Sponsors NYU Law Litigation Finance Symposium

Crowell was pleased to host and sponsor Opus Connect’s recent NYC Private Debt Roundtable. The event drew a group of private debt leaders for engaging and thoughtful discussion around some of the key challenges private debt firms face today, and the emerging opportunities. The conversation covered everything from new technologies shaping the space to how firms are evolving their strategies in response to a changing environment.

Continue Reading Crowell Hosts NYC Private Debt Roundtable With Opus Connect

Crowell was proud to serve as a sponsor of the recent Drinks & Discussion hosted by the International Legal Finance Association (ILFA). The event on April 16 brought together over 150 leading practitioners, funders, and professionals from across the legal finance ecosystem at Grand Brasserie for networking and discussion on one of the most dynamic and rapidly evolving areas of finance.

Crowell has a leading Financial Services group, and is pleased to support the mission of ILFA through our sponsorship.

Continue Reading Crowell Sponsors ILFA Drinks & Discussion in New York

The financing of legal actions by third parties has grown exponentially since the early 2000s and is now common across many common law and civil law jurisdictions. It is still in its infancy in Qatar, but the Qatar International Centre for Conciliation and Arbitration (the “QICCA”) expressly recognised third party dispute funding in its 2024 rules update (the “QICCA Rules”).

This article seeks to provide a brief introduction to third party funding, and how it can make justice more accessible in a time when arbitration has become an expensive endeavour. While third party dispute funding may allow greater access to arbitration, it requires a careful balancing act between the interests of the claim’s stakeholders, and indeed those of the adverse party, with private equity investment demands.

Continue Reading Qatar Third-Party Dispute Funding: An Introduction

Seeking to protect their investments in the face of increased liability management exercises, lenders began signing “cooperation agreements,” which required the lenders to cooperate when negotiating to restructure existing debt or provide new debt to their shared borrower. These cooperation agreements protect lenders from “creditor-on-creditor violence” — when one lender (or a subset of lenders) renegotiates with a borrower to the benefit of the negotiating lender and the detriment of the others.

In November 2025, Optimum Communications, Inc. (f/k/a Altice) and CSC Holdings, LLC (together, Optimum) filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against its lenders — Apollo, Ares, GoldenTree, Loomis, Oaktree, and PGIM (collectively, the Cooperative) — challenging their cooperation agreement as an unlawful cartel. In the complaint, Optimum alleges two antitrust theories: (i) the Cooperation Agreement constituted a group boycott of Optimum because the Cooperative members agreed not to individually work with Optimum to restructure debt absent supermajority approval from the Cooperative, and (ii) the Cooperation Agreement constituted an unlawful price-fixing scheme by requiring the Cooperative’s steering committee to negotiate with Optimum exclusively, rather than allow Optimum to negotiate individual discounts with individual lenders. Optimum alleges that because the Cooperative controls approximately 88% of the entire leveraged finance market and 99% of Optimum’s outstanding debt, the Cooperation Agreement has made it incredibly difficult for Optimum to restructure its debt.

Continue Reading Optimum’s Shot Across the Bow: An Antitrust Challenge to Cooperation Agreements