Legal Library: Cases and Proceedings

According to the FTC’s complaint, Berkshire Hathaway changed convertible notes it owned in USG into 21.4 million voting securities on December 9, 2013. As a result of the conversion, the value of its USG holdings exceeded $283.6 million, the premerger reporting threshold under the HSR Act at the time. The company subsequently made a corrective filing, and acknowledged that the transaction should have been reported under the HSR Act. The final judgment settling the complaint requires Berkshire Hathaway to pay a civil penalty of $896,000, based on the time it was in violation of the HSR Act, from December 9, 2013 when it acquired the shares via the conversion through February 3, 2014, the end of the waiting period for the corrective filing.

Fidelity National Financial, Inc. agreed to settle charges that its proposed $2.9 billion acquisition of Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) would likely substantially lessen competition by combining the firms’ title plant assets in several local markets in Oregon. To preserve competition, the proposed settlement requires Fidelity to sell a copy of LPS’s title plants in six Oregon counties and an ownership interest equivalent to LPS’s share of a jointly owned title plant in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area.

WARNING: Don't be fooled by callers asking for money who pretend to be employed by or on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission or helping to refund money recovered by the Commission. When the Commission seeks refund for consumers through its law enforcement efforts, it does not ask consumers to pay anything. It also does not authorize anyone else to collect such payments. If someone asks you to pay a fee to receive money, do not pay. Please let us know about it by filing a complaint at www.ftc.gov/complaint, or call Harold Kirtz, an FTC attorney, directly at 404-656-1357 if this concerns the alleged return of money from the Resort Solution Trust scam.