After months of cutting quiet deals with banks in the high-stakes Manhattan state court litigation challenging its 2009 restructuring, MBIA Inc. reached a major settlement with Morgan Stanley on Tuesday. But for some of MBIA's Wall Street adversaries, the notion that MBIA had to rely on a loan to fund part of the settlement vindicates their claims that the insurer's restructuring was a fraud.

In January 2010 the SEC predicted that its new program to encourage companies to come forward with evidence of wrongdoing would be a "game changer." But since then, the SEC has entered into just three non-prosecution agreements and one deferred prosecution agreement, according to a report by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. The agency counters that it's signed 42 individuals to cooperation agreements, and its initiative is "already paying substantial dividends."

There aren't going to be any class actions directly related to the ABACUS offering at the heart of the SEC suit, since it involves only a tiny group of investors. But two pending MBS cases against Goldman show that Rich Klapper knows his client very well--and knows how to defend against fraud allegations.

The U.K. Bribery Act arrived this summer in a hail of publicity. But that act won't move mountains without a change in Britain's legal structure. "There's a real need [in the U.K.] for a middle ground between full-on criminal prosecution and civil recovery," said the former U.K. corruption prosecutor Matthew Cowie, now with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meager & Flom.

Since 1993, Winston & Strawn's Thomas Buchanan has led the charge in an epic shareholder battle with the federal government over the FDIC's seizure of Meritor Savings Bank during the savings and loan crisis. It's finally over--almost.