Lookzy: all your daily legal news in 0.1 billable hours. Plain English coverage of deals, litigation and legal trends trusted by lawyers at Cravath, Latham, Skadden, Gunderson and elsewhere.

Welcome to Lookzy. In today's Lookzy:

• SVB now under DOJ and SEC investigation

• Litigation funder sues company whose litigation it's funding

• A driverless tech company plans for IPO

• GPT-4 easily passes the Bar and LSAT

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ECON SNAPSHOT

The difference between special bonuses and layoffs

THE VERDICT

Arguing today's litigation news

Banking crisis followup. The Department of Justice and SEC are reportedly investigating SVB's failure, including executive trading activity. Separately, a proposed class action was filed by a Signature Bank shareholder against the bank and certain former executives. The complaint alleges that the defendants violated federal securities laws by making false or misleading statements about Signature Bank’s financial condition, risk management practices and exposure to fraud and money laundering schemes.

Illegal groupchats. The DOJ is reportedly investigating the collapse of TerraUSD (UST), an algorithmic stablecoin that was supposed to be pegged to the US dollar but lost its value in May 2022. The probe follows a civil fraud lawsuit filed by the SEC against Terraform Labs, the company behind UST, and its founder Do Kwon last month. The DOJ is investigating group-chat conversations among trading firms Jane Street, Jump Trading and Alameda Research about a possible bailout of TerraUSD. Prosecutors are looking into whether the firms violated any laws or regulations by discussing or coordinating their actions.

Painful tax bill. Amgen Inc. has been sued in a proposed class action by a pension fund accusing Amgen of waiting too long to tell investors it might owe the Internal Revenue Service $10.7 billion in back taxes and penalties. The lawsuit claims that Amgen misled investors about its financial health by failing to disclose that it received a notice of deficiency from the IRS in 2019 for its tax years 2010 to 2012 and that it faced similar assessments for its tax years 2013 to 2018.

Lit funding + meddling. Burford Capital Limited, the world’s largest litigation funder, has sued food distribution company Sysco Corp. over a $140 million investment it made into Sysco's antitrust litigation. Burford claims that Sysco breached their agreement by trying to settle price-fixing claims against major poultry processors and meatpackers for too low amounts without Burford’s consent. Burford seeks a court order to bar Sysco from settling those claims and to enforce an arbitration ruling that blocks Sysco from doing so. Sysco has countersued Burford, accusing it of meddling in the antitrust settlements and colluding with a law firm to file meritless lawsuits against Sysco.

THE DEAL

Wheelin' and dealin' today's corporate news

Banking on the shelf. Wells Fargo filed a $9.5 billion mixed securities Form S-3 shelf, which allows the bank to sell any combination of debt securities, warrants, units or certain other securities. The optionality for Wells Fargo to offer such securities comes at a time of deep volatility in the banking sector.

Big buy. Apollo Global Management agreed to acquire chemical company Univar Solutions Inc. for $8.1 billion in cash, including debt. Wachtell is representing Univar and Paul Weiss is representing Apollo.

Take (back) private. Blackstone Inc. agreed to buy Cvent Holding Corp., a cloud-based event-software provider, for $4.6 billion. The transaction will take Cvent private again after being taken public by Vista Equity Partners in 2021. Simpson Thacher is representing Blackstone, Goodwin Procter is representing the Special Committee and Kirkland is representing Cvent.

WeRide to IPO. Guangzhou WeRide Technology Co., a Chinese driverless technology startup, filed confidentially for an initial public offering in the US and is looking to raise as much as $500 million. The company is backed by Renault SA, Nissan Motor Co. and Mitsubishi Motors Corp., among other notable backers. WeRide develops autonomous driving software and hardware for passenger vehicles and minibuses. WeRide was valued at approximately $4.4 billion in March 2022.

BUSINESS OF THE FIRM

Lateral Moves:

• Quinn Emanuel hired partner Richard Godfrey from Kirkland & Ellis.

• Orrick hired partner Jamie Evans from Fenwick.

• DLA Piper hired a 30-lawyer patent team from Dentons.

Industry News:

• OpenAI released the next iteration of its AI chat program, GPT-4, which it noted passed both the universal bar exam (90th percentile) and LSAT (88th percentile). This prompted DoNotPay to once again make waves:

BOILERPLATE

Alright, back to billing. That's all, folks!