Robert Lowinger v. Douglas Oberhelman

Wood, Chief Judge.

In the fall of 2011 Caterpillar Inc. began making serious inquiries about the possible acquisition of a Chinese mining company, ERA Mining Machinery Ltd., and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Zhengzhou Siwei Mechanical & Electrical Equipment Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (We refer to the two companies as "Siwei" for simplicity.) Caterpillar completed that acquisition in June 2012. Only after the closing did Caterpillar gain access to Siwei's physical inventory. What it found was unsettling. An inspection of the inventory revealed that Siwei had overstated its profits and improperly…