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Professionals 136 results
Capabilities 58 results
Practice Area
Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation
With attorneys based in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C., Winston’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation (EBEC) team represents a broad range of plan sponsors and offers clients not just deal support but the full suite of employee benefit services. These include public company reporting and executive compensation, employee benefits in mergers and acquisitions, qualified retirement plans and Title I investment advice, health and welfare benefit plans, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), and international human resources matters. And driven by a volatile labor market, we are partnering with clients to innovate plan structure and design, including cutting-edge services such as private exchange medical benefits, employee benefits in captive insurance, and fiduciary governance best practices. With decades of experience, our EBEC team maintains strong brand recognition, with clients describing our attorneys as “superb,” “very client-friendly,” “extremely responsive and able to bring forth the right resources,” and “having an “incredible breadth of knowledge.”
Practice Area
Our attorneys have extensive experience counseling U.S. and multinational public companies across a range of industries in all aspects of corporate governance, securities, and compliance matters. We advise public companies, boards of directors and their committees, and senior executives on the corporate governance and compliance matters that public companies and their leadership confront—from board structuring and succession planning to shareholder activism and SEC regulation. Drawing on our experience as seasoned counselors, we keep clients abreast of evolving trends and best practices to proactively manage any governance or compliance issues. We have assembled one of the most experienced teams of any law firm in the country that’s counseling public companies.
Practice Area
International trade is essential for the growth and development of global economies and businesses. As international trade has expanded and developed, so too have the myriad rules and regulations that govern it. The global compliance environment is becoming more complex by the day and can be difficult to navigate without the assistance of experienced counsel. Failure to comply with international trade rules and regulations—even if done so unwittingly—can lead to civil and criminal penalties, monitorships, consent agreements, debarment, reputational damage, substantial administrative burden, legal expense, and unsatisfied business objectives. Increasingly, there also is exposure for individual officers/directors, which can include monetary penalties and, potentially, jail time.
Experience 3 results
Experience
|April 2, 2026
Business Combination and Secured Financing of Keo World and Maha Capital AB
Served as legal counsel to KEO World, Inc., a Miami-based fintech platform specializing in embedded credit and B2B digital payments, in connection with its business combination with Maha Capital AB, a publicly listed investment company on Nasdaq Stockholm. The transaction, which closed on April 2, 2026, was structured as a reverse triangular merger through which KEO World became a wholly owned subsidiary of Maha, with KEO World's parent entity receiving approximately 141 million newly issued Maha shares and nearly 49.2 million earn-out warrants as consideration. In connection with the closing, Maha also executed two directed capital raises totaling USD 27 million at SEK 16 per share and announced a planned third raise of USD 8 million ahead of a contemplated dual listing on a U.S. national securities exchange. Based on publicly available disclosures, the combined transaction has been valued at approximately USD 680 million.
Experience
|April 12, 2024
Winston Wins Unanimous Supreme Court Case Clarifying Securities Fraud Liability
Winston secured a unanimous victory in the U.S. Supreme Court for Macquarie Infrastructure Corp. in a federal securities class action that was filed after the announcement of the company’s 2017 financial results and 2018 dividend guidance caused US$2+B drop in market cap. The Court ruled that silence does not equal fraud, even if SEC regulations require disclosure. This decision resolves a longstanding disagreement among the lower courts about the scope of securities fraud liability under Rule 10b-5. It makes clear that a company cannot be liable under that provision for a pure omission of material information, even if SEC regulations required the information to be disclosed. This is particularly important for disclosures under Item 303 of SEC Regulation S-K, which requires management to make complex judgments about the likelihood of future events.
Experience
|June 30, 2021
VineBrook Homes Trust, Inc. Files Form 10 to Register Shares of Class A Common Stock
Winston & Strawn LLP represented VineBrook Homes Trust, Inc. in connection with its Form 10 to register shares of Class A common stock, par value 1 cent per share, pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. VineBrook became subject to the registration requirements of Section 12(g) of the Exchange Act because, as of December 31, 2020, the aggregate value of their assets exceeded the applicable threshold and its common stock was held of record by 2,000 or more persons. As a result of the registration, VineBrook will be subject to the requirements of the Exchange Act and the rules promulgated thereunder. In particular, they will be required to file Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K, and Current Reports on Form 8-K, and otherwise comply with the disclosure obligations of the Exchange Act.
Insights & News 927 results
False Claims Act Playbook
|May 14, 2026
|3 Min Read
DOJ Launches FOCUS Initiative, Signaling Increasingly Data-Driven Era of FCA Enforcement
On April 30, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division announced a new initiative called the Fraud Oversight through Careful Use of Statistics (“FOCUS”) initiative, aimed at strengthening DOJ’s engagement with so‑called “data miner” whistleblowers who bring False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam actions based on publicly available government data, rather than insider knowledge.
In the Media
|May 13, 2026
|1 Min Read
Alexander Ott Discusses ITC Litigation Funding Disclosure Proposal with Law360
Winston & Strawn partner Alexander Ott was quoted in a Law360 article discussing the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC)’s proposed rule requiring disclosure of litigation funding in Section 337 intellectual property investigations. The proposed rule would require parties appearing before the ITC to disclose litigation funding arrangements and entities with financial interests or authority over litigation and settlement decisions. According to the article, the ITC stated that the information could help identify conflicts of interest and provide greater clarity in Section 337 investigations.
Capital Markets & Securities Law Watch
|May 13, 2026
|4 Min Read
From 10-Q to 10-S: What the SEC’s Optional Semiannual Reporting Proposal Means for Public Companies
On May 5, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed optional semiannual Exchange Act reporting on a new Form 10-S, which represents a significant shift in the public company disclosure landscape.
Other Results 42 results
Site Content
Site Content
Form 8-K is a form required to be filed by registrants with the SEC when certain significant or “material” events occur, such as mergers and acquisitions, changes in management, and director resignations. The form generally must be filed with four business days of the event triggering disclosure.
Law Glossary
Dark patterns are deceptive or manipulative designs on digital platforms that trick users into making unintended choices. Dark patterns can appear as designs that create misleading impressions, hide or delay disclosure of material information, lead to unauthorized charges, or obscure privacy choices. Some examples include advertisements deceptively formatted to look like independent editorial content; non-descriptive dropdowns, arrows, or small icons to hide the full cost and other terms, free trials that automatically convert to recurring subscriptions; and prominent cookie-consent banners that hide cookie-rejection options.