The 2008 Year in Review � Securities Litigation and Enforcement, is the first of a regular webcast series on related topics from Securities Docket(an online publication that tracks securities litigation and enforcement developments on a global basis).

This one hour presentation touches on all the big stories: the financial crisis; Siemens bribery; Mark Cuban and a host of other litigations (both successful and not); the Madoff scandal (could you have scripted it better – that the pronunciation of his name is: Made-off ?); the liability exposure of the major accounting firms; the culpability of the SEC in some of the year’s financial disasters and its need for a makeover…

Kudos to Securities Docket for assembling such an impressive speaker panel, all of whom have very worthwhile blogs – which inspired me to write this post:

Kevin LaCroix – an attorney and Partner in OakBridge Insurance Services, an insurance intermediary focused exclusively on management liability. Kevin is a prolific writer of the D&O Diary blog, which he refers to as “a journal from the world of Directors & Officers Liability with Occasional Commentary”.

Tom Gorman – former Senior Counsel with the SEC Enforcement Division, now Co-chair of ABA White Collar  Securities Section and Chair of Porter Wright Securities. Tom’s blog SEC Actions covers SEC investigations, civil and criminal, class actions and internal investigations. Today’s post poses a poignant question,The SEC and the Madoff Scandal: can the Commission Restore Confidence in its Ability to Protect Investors?

Francine McKenna – with a background at PwC, KPMG/BearingPoint, JP Morgan and Jefferson Wells/Manpower, Francine advises professional services firms. Her blog re: the Auditors is an insightful, highly engaging and often very funny look at Corporate Governance issues, the 4 big audit firms, securities regulation, the markets in general…

Walter Olson – a regular contributor to the NY Times and Wall Street Journal and a senior fellow at the NYC think tank . The Manhattan Institute, Walter’s popular blog Overlawyered provides commentary on the American litigation system – it’s anything but dry.

Bruce Carton – editor of Securities Docket, was a former senior counsel in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. A blog pioneer, Bruce is the author of Compliance Week’s Enforcement Action.

If you’re looking to stay plugged into capital markets issues, these blogs are worth a look.  We’ll write a future post soon on other great blogs that we follow.

At the end of the presentation on the Year In Review, each speaker was asked to provide their predictions for 2009:

• Kevin – we will see an unprecedented surge of securities class action suits, far outstripping 2002. (I told my son he should go into securities law!)
• Tom – predicts a significant reshaping of both the compliance and enforcement divisions of the SEC (and he doesn’t think it makes sense to merge the SEC with the CFTC).
• Francine – says that one of the Big 4 audit firms will be pushed to the brink of failure. (One of her blog readers is egging her on to create a pool predicting timing on this.)
• Walter – believes that a formerly rated Triple AAA firm will either have its executive indicted or will be revealed to be insolvent. (He also made reference to the fact that Triple AAA will soon regain its former meaning as a reference to a bad car accident that required Ambulance… Apolice? Afire truck?  what else starts with “A”?)
• Bruce - predicts that 90% of lawyers will begin to use Twitter for PR. (I hope Twitter can keep up; yesterday it was sooooooo slow.)

With the exception of Bruce’s prediction, sadly none of these are surprising.

For 2009 I peered into my crystal ball, read the tea leaves in my cup and consulted the psychic who left a pamphlet on my windshield  happily 2008 was all about lessons learned (again). The coming year sees us all older and hopefully wiser.

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