While the recently announced $303 million settlement of the General Motors securities class action has already garnered a fair amount of attention in the blogosphere (See The 10b5 Daily and The D&O Diary), it is hard to pass up taking our own bite at the apple.

As noted by Kevin LaCroix at The D&O Diary, the lead plaintiffs in the GM case were two international institutional investors, both affiliates of DekaBank.

A reader asked whether that made GM the largest settlement where a non-US institutional investor was the lead plaintiff.

The short answer is no, but the long answer is far more interesting.

According to the most recent Top 100 Securities Class Action Settlements Report (a publication that we put out for clients each quarter), the largest securities class action settlements where a non-US institutional investor was the lead plaintiff would be the two Nortel Networks cases, where the Ontario Public Service Employees’ Union Pension Plan Trust Fund and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board were among the lead plaintiffs.

But most commentators (this one included) generally look at non-North American parties when we are looking to examine the role of non-US investors in US securities class actions.

The next largest settlement where a non-US institutional investor was the lead plaintiff is the Delphi case, which, with total settlements of just over $322 million is slightly larger than the total settlement in the GM securities class action.

In the Delphi case, Raiffeisen Kapitalanlage-Gesellschaft (Austria’s largest asset manager) and Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP (a pension fund for Dutch government and educational sector employees) were among the co-lead plaintiffs.

The initial reader question raised more questions for us over at SLW World Headquarters - namely who gets to scream "We're #1" with regard to some of the other securities class action settlements over the years.

So without further ado, here is a quick rundown of some of the largest securities class action settlements:

Taft-Hartley fund as Lead Plaintiff - Tyco International, Ltd.

The Plumbers & Pipefitters National Pension Fund, United Association Office Employees Pension Plan, United Association of Local Union Officers & Employees Pension and United Association General Officers Pension Plan were among the lead plaintiffs.

Private Institutional Investor as Lead Plaintiff - Toss Up

Voyageur Asset Management was one of the lead plaintiffs in the Tyco litigation, but at the class certification stage, they were not appointed as a class representative by Judge Barbadoro.

The next largest settlement with a private institutional investor as a lead plaintiff was the Royal Ahold litigation, where Generic Trading of Philadelphia, LLC, was co-lead plaintiff.

Both of these cases (and a host more) should be sufficient ammunition should my quixotic quest ever need to be revived.

And of course, the largest securities class action settlement where there were no institutional investors serving as lead plaintiffs was the Bank of America litigation stemming from the NationsBank / BankAmerica merger in 1998.

And for those that wanted something a little more lighthearted, this article recounts the history of the foam #1 finger.

August 14, 2008

Weil, Gotshal & Manges' Releases "Survey of 2007 Securities Fraud Litigation"

Hot off the presses is The 10b-5 Guide: A Survey of 2007 Securities Fraud Litigation from Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Just as 2007 saw a substantial increase in the number of new federal securities class actions, the 2007 Weil guide needs more room (253 pages) to discuss all that is brewing in the wide world of securities class actions.

The guide is quite wide-ranging, discussing everything from pleading standards, loss causation and class certification to developments in the lead plaintiff appointment process and that ever popular cocktail party conversation topic, the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998, or SLUSA to the cognoscenti.

The guide, just as with the 2006 version, breaks down these the information by both topic and circuit.

Thanks again to co-author Paul Ferrillo for sending us a copy, which you can download here.

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August 1, 2008

Options Backdating - Newest Update

Once again, it is time to update the options backdating numbers, with the announcement this week that Monster Worldwide Inc. had agreed to settle an options backdating securities class action for $47.5 million.

Of the 39 options backdating cases that have been filed as securities class actions, 24 have now reached a resolution. Of the resolved cases, 10 of those cases have been dismissed and 14 have settled.

The fourteen settlements total $1.36 billion, for an average of $97.7 million. But, removing the largest settlement (UnitedHealth Group) lowers the average back to $36.41 million.

As always, our complete analysis can be accessed in this presentation.

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