Profile view of Donald J Trump, presidential candidate, at the Boca Raton, FL Rally on March 13th, 2016.
Photo Credit: Windover Way Photography/Shutterstock

Four top law firms turned down White House requests to represent President Donald Trump in the ongoing Russia probe — and many cited his infamous unwillingness to heed legal advice as a key reason.

Yahoo News’ Mike Isikoff reports that the White House recently reached out to some of America’s top lawyers to see if they would work for Trump on the Russia investigation, including Brendan Sullivan of Williams & Connolly; Ted Olson of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Paul Clement and Mark Filip of Kirkland & Ellis; and Robert Giuffra of Sullivan & Cromwell. 

However, all of these lawyers turned the White House down, forcing the administration to rely on longtime Trump attorney Marc E. Kasowitz instead. 

“The concerns were, ‘The guy won’t pay and he won’t listen,’” said one of Isikoff’s sources, who is described as a “lawyer close to the White House.” 

Another attorney tells Isikoff that Trump’s toxic political image at the moment made firms reluctant to be associated with him, as they feared association with Trump would hurt their efforts to recruit top talent to their firms. 

“Do I want to be associated with this president and his policies?” the attorney said in explaining the firms’ concerns about working for Trump.

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Four top law firms reportedly turned down requests to represent President Trump in the investigation into ties between his administration and Russia.

Lawyers from the firms declined to represent Trump in the probe over concerns that he would not take their advice, Yahoo News reported.

Brendan Sullivan of Williams & Connolly, Ted Olson of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Paul Clement and Mark Filip of Kirkland & Ellis and Robert Giuffra of Sullivan & Cromwell are reportedly among those who turned the White House down. None of them returned requests for comment to Yahoo.

Some lawyers familiar with the situation cited existing commitments, upcoming trials, possible damage to a firm’s reputation and potential conflicts with clients as part of their reasoning for not representing Trump.

But those lawyers reportedly said they were concerned Trump would make public statements against their legal advice that hurt his position in the investigation.

“The concerns were, ‘The guy won’t pay and he won’t listen,’ ” one lawyer close to the White House told Yahoo.

Marc Kasowitz, who has repeatedly represented Trump, is serving as his personal attorney in the probe.

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Business executives today urged Baton Rouge companies to embrace diversity and tackle issues like race, particularly as tensions have run high since the deaths of Alton Sterling and three law enforcement officers.

BRAC’s annual diversity and inclusion event at the Lod Cook Alumni Center was the latest in a series of initiatives from business, government and community groups aimed at addressing Baton Rouge’s challenges since the high-profile shootings last summer.

The event’s keynote speaker, IBM Chief Diversity Officer Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, argued that millennials are driving a trend toward inclusion in business—particularly in areas like LGBT rights.
“While we may compete on a number of different dimensions, on this issue we can’t and we shouldn’t,” McIntyre said, citing IBM’s initiatives on sexual orientation, gender and race over the years. “Employees are demanding public accountability.”

And McIntyre argued the concept is not just an intangible, lofty goal, even for small businesses. Instead, she said, there is “irrefutable” evidence that championing inclusion will help companies’ bottom lines.

Jeff Cherry, founder of the Baltimore-based Conscious Venture Lab, said in a panel discussion before McIntyre’s speech that his firm creates higher returns for shareholders by focusing first on purpose instead of profits. The “conscious capital” movement is creating a “new narrative about capitalism,” he said.
“The purpose of business is not to create value for shareholders,” Cherry said; instead, creating value should be an outcome of addressing societal ills. “Lots of people in my hometown—New York City, on Wall Street—don’t believe that. But the horse has left the barn.”

Cherry’s argument represents a marked shift from the economic theory that has comprised conventional wisdom on finance for decades, he noted, but millennials are driving a more purpose-driven economy. Plus, Cherry noted, “conscious capitalism” works for companies’ bottom lines.

ExxonMobil’s head of strategic procurement, Douglas Fisher, cited a 2006 study from the Hackett Group that concluded companies that focus on diversifying their supply chain actually get 133% higher returns on their cost of procurement operations.

Fisher said ExxonMobil has sought out minority-, women-, veteran- and LGBT-owned businesses, along with other types of small and disadvantaged companies, over the past several years. The company in 2016 spent $1.4 billion on services and products from such firms—including $100 million for Exxon in Baton Rouge.

Maxine Crump, who founded Dialogue on Race Louisiana, said the workplace has long been divorced from discussions about racism and equity in Baton Rouge, despite the fact that those issues exist even within businesses.

“There is still a silent issue going on in all the companies here in Baton Rouge,” Crump said, noting several firms—including Taylor Porter Law Firm—have engaged her organization to facilitate talks on race. “The attempts to address race in Baton Rouge have not yet met the scale of the problem.”

—Sam Karlin

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BENGALURU: There was a sharp decline in the use of H-1B visas by Indian IT companies in Barack Obama’s last year as US president, indicating that Donald Trump may only be accelerating an ongoing trend.

The top seven India-based IT companies received only 9,356 new H-1B visas in fiscal year 2016, a drop of 37% from FY2015, according to an analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP). These are petitions filed during the April 2016 H-1B filing period and approved for individuals to start work on October 1, 2016 (the start of 2017 fiscal year).

In the year before, the top seven India-based IT companies received 14,792. The foundation said the decline reflects, in part, industry trends, particularly digital services such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence, that require fewer people to service US clients. It said IT services companies are also choosing to hire more locally.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School, told TOI he agrees with the NFAP report’s conclusion that technological change is prompting many India-based companies to file fewer H-1B petitions, not jawboning by the US president or Congress. “The rise of artificial intelligence and cloud computing mean fewer people are needed to perform certain IT jobs,” said Yale-Loehr.

The US has a cap of 65,000 for H-1B visas issued in a year. If the number of applications are higher than this, which has been the case in recent years, it uses a lottery to determine who gets how many. The more the applications a company files, the higher its chances of obtaining more visas. So, if the India-based companies have received fewer visas, it is because they filed fewer applications. TCS last week said the number of its H-1B applications this year is a third of what it was in 2015.

The NFAP report notes that the global trend is for corporate clients of both US and India-based IT services companies to demand digital engineering and more sophisticated services, including better data analysis that requires fewer workers and more advanced technology. “These trends have escaped the notice of Congress and many policymakers, which have aimed for more visa restrictions at IT services companies,” NFAP said, referring to the Trump administration’s moves to restrict H-1Bs.

Yale-Loehr echoed that sentiment, “President Trump’s recent executive order calling for limits on H-1B visas looks backward, not forward. The current unemployment rate for computer-related jobs is 2.5% — lower than the overall national unemployment rate of 4.4%. We should encourage bright foreign students to stay and work in the United States after they graduate, not send them overseas to compete against us.”

The report noted that MNCs in IT services too received fewer H-1Bs. Accenture saw a 44% decline in new H-1Bs between FY2016 and FY2015, and IBM’s fell to 1,608, from 1,919. Indian IT companies still have more than 50% of their employees in the US on H-1Bs and L-1s. There are moves to sharply increase the minimum salary paid to these visa holders. If this happens, the Indian IT companies could be hit badly.

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GREENWICH, Conn. – June 6, 2017 – PRLog — The FINRA claim was filed by The White Law Group and submitted on behalf of a Greenwich, CT man alleging claims for violation of common law fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, and negligent supervision. The claim further alleges that Stephens, Inc. unsuitably invested the client in the following high risk private placement investments:

Naturally Advanced Technology/Crailar
Meriweather Capital
YuuZoo
MicroPlay

The claim seeks damages between $500,000 and $999,999.

Before recommending an investment, a broker-dealer has a fiduciary duty to adequately disclose the risks involved in the investment and to perform the necessary due diligence to determine whether the investment is suitable for the investor.

It is alleged Stephens, Inc. failed to perform the necessary due diligence on these investments prior to recommending them to these particular investors.

It is further alleged that the financial advisor that handled the accounts at issue is John Hoekman. According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Hoekman has been the broker of record for at least six (6) customer disputes for similar allegations.

According to D. Daxton White, managing partner of The White Law Group, ” It is unfortunate, but we believe that many more investors have suffered devastating losses due to the broker-dealer’s failure to supervise and don’t realize they have recovery options.”

“Brokerage firms are required to supervise their advisors to ensure that they are complying with FINRA rules. If it can be determined that the financial advisor violated FINRA rules and the employers failed to adequately supervise him, these firms can be held responsible for any resulting losses in a FINRA arbitration claim.”

FINRA Dispute Resolution is an arbitration venue for investors with claims against their brokerage firm or financial professional.  It provides investors with an opportunity to attempt to recoup their investment losses without filing such claims in court.

The White Law Group is a national securities fraud, securities arbitration, and investor protection law firm with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Vero Beach, Florida.

For more information The White Law Group and the claim filed against Stephens, Inc., please contact the firm at 1-888-637-5510 or visit https://www.whitesecuritieslaw.com.

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Companies commonly under fire for abusing the H-1B program received significantly fewer of the coveted work visas in fiscal 2016 compared to a year earlier, according to a new report. Experts attribute the drop to the cloud and artificial intelligence.

The H-1B visa, which allows highly-skilled foreigners to live and work in the U.S. at a sponsoring company, has been a constant point of contention between Silicon Valley and Washington. While tech companies rely on the visas to staff engineering positions, others say they are used by companies to squeeze out American jobs.

Critics often point to the high number of visas going to Indian outsourcing firms —such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro — as a reason to curb the H-1B visa program. While these Indian companies still received the most H-1B visas for initial employment in 2016, a report released Monday by the National Foundation for American Policy found that those numbers are sharply declining.

Stuart Anderson, author of the report and executive director of the nonpartisan think tank, said the conclusions weaken the Trump administration’s argument for wanting to limit the number of H-1B visas issued.

According to the report, seven Indian outsourcing companies collectively received 37 percent fewer H-1B visas in fiscal 2016 than in 2015. Anderson attributes the drop to a global trend of corporate clients demanding digital services that require fewer workers and more advanced, cloud-based technology.

The study was based on an analysis of government data provided by the Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Only 85,000 H-1B visas are available to for-profit companies every year, and the number of applications has far exceeded that number in recent years. Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, noted that companies are increasingly using other types of work visas — such as the L-1— to bring in foreign talent.

The report notes that the drop in the number of approved H-1B applications occurred before the election of Donald Trump. A few months after he took office, both Infosys and Tata announced job-creation measures for U.S. workers.

In an April call with Wall Street analysts to discuss fourth-quarter earnings, Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka said the company will expand its local hiring to “mitigate any potential risks from visa regulations in the U.S.”

Meanwhile, Bay Area tech companies including Intel, Google and Apple received significantly more H-1Bs over the past year, according to the study. H-1Bs are commonly used by tech firms to attract talent from around the world. The sector has long lobbied for more visas, saying that the demand for skilled labor far outweighs the supply.

A Chronicle analysis found that large American tech companies tend to pay certain employees holding H-1B visas significantly more than the minimum salary required, in contrast to some Indian outsourcing companies.

The differing distribution of H-1Bs among companies is not the only change the visa program has recently experienced. In addition, the number of applications for the visa program has dropped for fiscal 2018. It’s the first dip in applications the U.S. has experienced in years. Experts said the drop partly shows that Trump’s “America’s First rhetoric” is working — as well as a change in the tactics of the Indian outsourcing companies.

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