So, the Supreme Court has agreed to take the case of two alleged whistleblowers suing Fidelity.

What could that mean for the industry?

Well. Bloomberg BusinessWeek posits that the "case will likely pit business groups against President Barack Obama’s administration, testing the scope of a law enacted after the collapses of Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc."

Why the headache? According to FoxBusiness, the issues involve the nuts-and-bolts of the whistleblower protections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and the unique nuances of running a mutual fund business.

In particular, the law's whistleblower protections apply to employees of public companies who report suspected fraud or securities violations to their supervisors or to the government.

However, most mutual funds, including Fidelity's, have no employees. Rather, the asset management and services for the fund are usually provided by privately held companies, in this case Fidelity and its subsidiaries.

Of course, the jury is still out, for now. The Court has until June 2014 to head the case, according to Reuters.

The story also caught the attention of the Associated Press. 

Edited by: Tommy Fernandez


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