We haven't spent enough time in the Lone Star State to know whether everything really is bigger in Texas. But when it comes to plaintiffs attorney fees in shareholder M&A cases, it looks like there may be some truth to the cliche.

The German engineering company Siemens made history yesterday, when it agreed to pay fines totaling $1.34 billion to regulators across the world to settle a bribery probe. The $800 million that Siemens will pay to the Department of Justice and the SEC is by far the largest amount ever extracted in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case. It could have been worse. The FCPA Blog writes that Siemens faced up to $2.7 billion in fines under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and could have been charged with antibribery provisions, which would have kept the company from bidding for U.S. contracts. But U.S. prosecutors asked for only $350 million in criminal fines and didn't pursue antibribery charges.

Bank of America's battle with the SEC may be dominating the headlines, but the bank's other Merrill Lynch merger litigation grinds on. On Monday, a Delaware judge refused to dismiss a shareholder derivative suit against BofA directors over the merger, possibly paving the way for a trial.

We called Mendelsohn after reading about a newly disclosed, eight-country probe of four pharmaceutical companies and noting the rapid upward spiral of recent FCPA settlements. His prediction: FCPA defense is only going to get hotter.

After an eight-year odyssey through the California courts, San Francisco antitrust lawyer Joseph Alioto may have finally reached the end of the line in a sprawling price-fixing case against Big Pharma.

Two weeks before pivotal appellate arguments over the fate of the proposed $8.5 billion settlement she negotiated with Bank of America, Kathy Patrick of Gibbs & Bruns is showing no signs of backing down from pursuing demands that major U.S. banks repurchase mortgage-backed securities.�

After initially seeking $138 million from all defendants, shareholders settle for $8.5 million from Deloitte defendants and $6.5 million from Grant Thornton International.

Manhattan federal judge Kevin Castel dismissed claims relating to BofA's decision to keep mum about mounting Merrill losses, but he said investors had adequately established scienter with regard to BofA's failure to disclose a multibillion dollar Merrill bonus pool.