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Reid Whitten

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Reid is the Managing Partner of Sheppard Mullin's London office, practicing in international trade regulations and investigations.

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If your company is like many, your board of directors may be demanding that you put more effort into environmental, social, and governance issues, which have become known by the now-ubiquitous acronym “ESG.” Those demands don’t come from nowhere: consumers are demanding transparency and social responsibility. In addition, if your company does business internationally, regulators are now focused on international social justice issues (such as the use of forced labor) more than ever.
Continue Reading Does Your Trade Policy Support Your Company’s Values?

This past month, the U.S. Senate debated a provision in the Innovation and Competition Act that would require the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review any proposed gifts and contracts of $1 million or more to U.S. research institutions from a foreign source. That would mean that the U.S. government would have a new level of oversight of such gifts, be required to investigate the ultimate source of the funds, and be able to impose mitigation measures on or prohibit such gifts.
Continue Reading Open Research, Foreign Finance, and a University’s Mission

Contrary to some expectations, the Trump Administration Department of Justice imposed record penalties under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act from 2017 through 2020. But in each of those years, fewer and fewer new FCPA investigations were initiated. We expect the Biden Administration to continue the trend of increasing FCPA enforcement settlement values, while also increasing the pace of initiating new FCPA investigations. Anticorruption matters present some of the most severe threats to a company’s organizational integrity. Understanding the changing enforcement culture is an important component to addressing those threats.
Continue Reading The Next Four Years of FCPA Enforcement: What to Expect From the Biden Administration

This spring, two major sports teams were caught cheating. Both are consistent championship contenders in recent years.

In the United States, hardly any sports fan could have missed the report released by Major League Baseball concluding that the Houston Astros used cameras to steal signs from opposing pitchers, allowing Astros hitters to know what pitches were coming. The Astros exploited this scheme to win the World Series in 2017, reach the American League Championship in 2018, and reach the World Series again in 2019.[1]Continue Reading Foul Balls and Red Cards: How Baseball and Soccer’s Different Approaches to Cheating Illustrate the Power of Organizational Response