A New Approach to Measuring Shareholder Damages in Securities Class Actions

By Michael McDonald September 11, 2024 by renholding

Securities class-action lawsuits play a crucial role in holding corporations accountable for financial misdeeds. They typically involve allegations of securities fraud, where a company makes misleading statements or omits important information that leads to an inflated stock price. When the …

Does Plaintiffs’ Attorney Marketing Predict Corporate Litigation Risk?

By Steven E. Kaplan, Adi Masli, Matt Peterson, and Eric H. Weisbrod May 23, 2024 by renholding

Plaintiffs’ attorneys often issue marketing releases after public companies announce adverse corporate events. These releases typically say the attorneys are “investigating potential claims” against the company and encourage shareholders who have been harmed to contact the law firm. In a …

Are Securities Class Actions Appropriate to Address Secondary-Trading Crypto Fraud?

By Menesh S. Patel April 2, 2024 by renholding

Traders in the United States now routinely trade hundreds of crypto assets in secondary crypto markets, and the pool of tradable assets is growing. Through these transactions, traders have seen financial gains and losses, which at times have been substantial. …

The Federal Arbitration Act Should Not Cover Consumer Claims

By Jeff Sovern January 10, 2024 by renholding

Consumer protection laws face a fundamental enforcement issue: Because consumer claims are typically for small amounts, and litigation is expensive, it rarely makes economic sense for consumers to litigate their claims individually. Partly to deal with this problem, lawmakers created …

How Has Decreased Litigation Risk Changed U.S. Audit Firm Behavior?

By Anna Bergman Brown, Nicole M. Heron, Hagit Levy and Emanuel Zur June 8, 2023 by renholding

Audit firms’ risk of being sued has historically been an important factor driving audit quality and firm valuation in U.S. capital markets. Investors have traditionally targeted auditors in class action suits as “deep pockets” with a greater ability to pay …

ISS Discusses the Largest Class Action Settlements of 2022

By Jeff Lubitz and Jarett Sena January 10, 2023 by renholding

In a remarkable year of class action activity, investors across the globe agreed to settlements totaling over $7.4 billion^[1] in 2022, a greater than 75% increase from 2021. (A substantive year in review for the U.S. market will be

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ISS Discusses Five Non-U.S. Class Actions Investors Should Pay Attention To

By Jeff Lubitz September 1, 2022 by renholding

As institutional investors know, a vast majority of shareholder related class actions take place in the United States. This is accurate in terms of both newly filed cases and settlements.

However, non-North American shareholder litigation is significantly important to investors …

ISS Discusses Securities Class-Action Settlements in First Half of 2022

By Jeff Lubitz July 18, 2022 by renholding

The value of U.S. shareholder class action settlements in the first half of 2022 totaled $2.32 billion, the exact amount as the same period in 2021. However, the quantity of settlements in the first six months of the year increased

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To Remove or Not To Remove: Is that the Question in 1933 Act Securities Cases?

By Tanya Pierce March 25, 2022 by renholding

When the removal provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 (1933 Act) and the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) conflict, the 1933 Act should prevail. The conflict arises in cases involving initial offerings of noncovered securities when plaintiffs …

ISS Discusses Proposed Shareholder Class-Action Against ING Groep

By Elisa Mendoza February 16, 2022 by renholding

ING Groep N.V. – a company that offers banking services to private clients, small businesses, large corporations, financial institutions, and governments worldwide – is at the epicenter of a proposed shareholder class action. Investors are looking to remediate the significant

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ISS Discusses $4 Billion in Settlements Expected to Kick-Off 2022

By Jeff Lubitz January 13, 2022 by renholding

As 2021 came to a close, the final tally of new U.S. shareholder class action complaints declined for the second straight year (this followed a record number of new cases from 2017 – 2019). Industry experts point to three factors

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Cleary Gottlieb Discusses Delaware Chancery Decision on SPAC Merger Challenge

By John A. Kupiec, Roger Cooper, Mark McDonald, Pascale Bibi and James Langston January 10, 2022 by renholding

In one of the first opinions addressing fiduciary duty claims in the context of a transaction involving a special purpose acquisition company (“SPAC”), the Delaware Court of Chancery determined that the SPAC shareholders’ right to redeem can be undermined by …

ISS Discusses the Challenges of Litigating Class Actions in the UK

By Elisa Mendoza December 6, 2021 by renholding

Although the United States inherited its common law legal system from the United Kingdom, the U.S. securities class actions jurisprudence is well advanced of the development of this area of law in the United Kingdom. With the first major collective …

Jack Weinstein: Last of the Mohicans?

By John C. Coffee, Jr. December 2, 2021 by renholding

This is a speech that Professor Coffee is scheduled to deliver today as part of a webinar program that will pay tribute to Judge Jack Weinstein and will be presented jointly by Columbia Law School and the Institute of Judicial …

The Supreme Court and the Fraud on the Market Class Action

By Richard D. Freer November 4, 2021 by renholding

The class action is indispensable to private enforcement of SEC Rule 10b-5, which prohibits fraudulent practices in the secondary securities market. Though Rule 10b-5 is a criminal provision, courts have long inferred a private civil right of action, allowing defrauded …

Debevoise & Plimpton Discusses Expanded Horizons for Class Action Litigation in the UK

By Peter H. Goldsmith, Timothy McIver, Conway Blake and Amelia Blefari August 30, 2021 by renholding

Mass claimant litigation is on the rise in the English courts, with multinational companies in particular facing ever-growing exposure. While large class action suits are relatively common in jurisdictions such as the United States and Australia, until recently these actions …

Is Everything Securities Fraud?

By Emily Strauss May 19, 2021 by renholding

Securities litigation is almost inevitable for any public company. Often, investors sue because the firm’s managers engaged in fraud that directly harmed the shareholders – say, by doctoring the firm’s financials or lying about known business prospects. However, shareholders also …

Sullivan & Cromwell Discusses Second Circuit Standard for Standing in Data Breach Actions

By Nicole Friedlander, Anthony Lewis, Nader Mousavi, Matt Schwartz and Jessica Ecker May 7, 2021 by renholding

On April 26, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a unanimous opinion in McMorris v. Carlos Lopez & Associates, LLC [1] affirming the dismissal, on Article III standing grounds, of a class action predicated …

Wachtell Lipton Offers Thoughts for Boards of Directors in 2020

By Martin Lipton, Steven A. Rosenblum, William Savitt, Karessa L. Cain, Hannah Clark and Bita Assad July 8, 2020 by renholding

The past six months have been marked by a profound upheaval that has accelerated the growing focus on both the purpose of the corporation and the role of the board in overseeing and leading the corporation in ways that promote …

Skadden Discusses Significant Ninth Circuit Ruling on Scienter in Securities Fraud

By Peter B. Morrison, Virginia Milstead, Winston P. Hsiao, Zachary Faigen and Raza Rasheed June 22, 2020 by renholding

On June 10, 2020, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a putative securities fraud class action in a potentially significant decision for securities defendants, particularly those in the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device space. The Ninth Circuit in Nguyen …

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