The D & O Diary : Directors and Officers Liability and Insurance : The D & O Diary : Kevin LaCroix : Securities Laws, Corporate Fraud, D & O Litigation

On February 7, 2007, New Century Financial Corp. became the first company to be named in subprime-related securities lawsuit. On January 31, 2008, just short of one year later, Judge Dean Pregerson of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss, but without prejudice and with leave to amend. For background on the lawsuit, refer here. For a copy of the January 31 opinion, refer here.

The plaintiff shareholders had initiated the complaint following the company’s February 7, 2007 announcement (here) that it would be restating its financial statements for the quarters ended March 31, June 30 and September 30, 2006, because of the company’s need to readjust the company’s allowance for “the potential repurchase of loans resulting from early-payment defaults by the underlying borrowers.” The company said that the reserve did not allow for the discounted price the company sustained upon its disposition of repurchased loans. The company’s press release also said that

the company’s methodology for estimating the volume of repurchase claims to be included in the repurchase reserve calculations did not properly consider, in each of the three quarters of 2006, the growing volume of repurchase claims outstanding.

On April 2, 2007, the company announced (here) that it had filed for relief under Chapter 11 of the U.S Bankruptcy Code. The company’s shares ultimately declined more than 97% percent.

On September 14, 2007, the lead plaintiff in the subprime-related securities lawsuit pending against New Century, the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System, filed a consolidated class action complaint. The consolidated complaint names as defendants the company and certain of its directors and officers; the company’s auditor, KPMG, and investment banks that underwrote the company’s June 2005 and August 2006 preferred stock offerings. The consolidated complaint raises allegations against all defendants under Section 11 of the ’33 Act, and against the company and its directors and officers under Section 10 of the ’34 Act.

In assessing the plaintiffs’ allegations, Judge Pregerson said that the complaint “lacks clarity in articulating the grounds for its claims.” The complaint “does not clearly identify the allegedly false statements or which of the factual allegations support and inference that particular statements are false or misleading.” The court attributed these shortcomings to the “lack of organization and somewhat unclear presentation of the allegations.” As a result, Judge Pregerson said, he “has difficulty determining whether plaintiffs have stated a claim.”

Judge Pregerson granted the motions to dismiss but allowed the plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint, by which the plaintiffs may attempt to “resolve deficiencies in the complaint by simple reorganization, revision and clarification of the currently long and at times meandering set of allegations.” The court instructed the plaintiffs that for each of the supposedly false or misleading statements, “the Complaint should identify some facts suggesting that the statement is false or misleading.” The court also directed the plaintiffs to attach to their amended complaint a chart specifying each allegedly false or misleading statement, the supporting factual allegations and the plaintiffs’ conclusion.

Like the prior dismissal of the subprime-related securities lawsuits involving IndyMac (about which refer here), the dismissal in the New Century case is without prejudice. Judge Pregerson’s opinion in the New Century case does not reach the merits, but nevertheless shows great impatience with the plaintiffs’ scattershot pleading approach. (“The Court,” Judge Pregerson observed in a footnote, “should not have to comb through the complaint to identify reasonable inferences from factual allegations to the legal conclusions.”) The plaintiffs have until February 25, 2008 to file an amended complaint. The court has scheduled argument on the updated motions to dismiss on April 21, 2008.

And so the motion to dismiss on the first-filed subprime securities lawsuit might be ready to be decided some 15 months (or more) after the complaint was initially filed. Obviously, at this rate it will take many years before the many subprime related cases have finally ground their way through the system, and before the full impact of the still evolving subprime crisis can be fully assessed.

But it is interesting to reflect, upon review of the events leading up to the New Century lawsuit, and as the subprime meltdown continues to unfold, that as early as the first quarter of 2006, New Century was already experiencing unanticipated loan repurchase requirements resulting from early-payment defaults on subprime loans. The subprime meltdown may seem like a sudden crisis, but has actually already been years in the making and will be even longer in the unfolding. Clearly, the wheels of finance, like the wheels of the law, grind exceeding slow but exceeding fine.

Hat tip to the Class Action Defense Blog (here) for the link to the January 31, 2008 opinion in the New Century case.

Loaded for Bear: The February 15, 2008 Wall Street Journal had an interesting article entitled “Bear Probe May Center on Investor Call” (here) discussing how federal prosecutors’ investigating the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds managed by Ralph Cioffi are examining Cioffi’s statements in an April 25, 2007 conference call with hedge fund investors. Readers interested in this investigation will want to refer back to the December 17, 2007 Business Week article entitled “The Bear Flu: How it Spread” (here) for further background on the circumstances under investigation.

According to the Business Week article, in the April 25 call, Cioffi made statements about a Bear Stearns branded CDO mechanism that Cioffi also managed called “Klio funding.” This mechanism sold commercial paper and other short term debt to money market funds to allow the CDO to buy other higher yielding, longer-term securities. The money market funds were willing to invest because Citigroup agreed to refund their initial stake plays interest (in a so-called “liquidity put”). Citigroup, in turn, drew fees and also was able to sell the Klios mortgage-backed securities of its own.

According to Business Week, the Klio structure spread rapidly as other hedge funds, CDO managers and bankers “followed Cioffi’s lead.” Between 2004 and 2007, Wall Street raised $100 billion through these types of CDOs, “essentially creating a whole new way for industry to finance risky subprime loans.” The article goes on to detail how the Klios offered the Bear Stearns hedge funds a “ready, in-house trading partner,” and that in many months “the Cioffi-managed Klios traded only with the Cioffi-managed Bear funds.” The daisy chain ended in disaster when the subprime loans underlying these investments began to deteriorate. Much of the subprime-related writedowns amongst the investment banks are related to the liquidity puts they provided.

The Journal article reports that in the April 25 call, one participant wondered whether the packaged mortgage securities in the Bear hedge funds were tied to subprime assets. Cioffi reportedly responded that he didn’t have time to teach “CDO 101” or answer basic questions about the securities. It is probably worth observing that the April 25 call came several weeks after New Century had (as noted above) filed for bankruptcy as a result of deteriorating subprime mortgages that were already a problem more than a year before that. The questioner’s inquiry in the April 25 call about subprime was not, as Cioffi’s belittling response suggests, the result of naïveté, but rather well-grounded concern.

Cioffi’s response, although lacking the vulgarity, calls to mind Jeffrey Skilling’s now infamous conference call statement in the fateful final months of Enron. In response to an analyst’s comment that Enron was the only company that releases its earnings statement without a balance sheet, Skilling said “Well, thank you very much, we appreciate that … asshole.” (Refer here for the details about Skilling and the infamous call.)

The comparison may or may not be fair. But every scandal needs a villain, and fair or not, it appears at least based on the news coverage concerning the collapse of the two Bear Stearns hedge funds, that the casting is now complete. It appears that during the current Act of the subprime drama that the role of villain is to be played by Ralph Cioffi, and as with those called to play the villains in prior dramas, his arrogance will be one of the things held against him.

The Backdating Disposition List, Updated: Regular readers know that I have been maintaining a list (accessed here) reflecting all backdating lawsuit dismissals, denials and settlements. I have recently updated the list to add three additional dismissals in options backdating-related derivative lawsuits, two of which are late additions of dismissals I missed last fall. The three dismissals are as follows:

Openwave: On February 12, 2008, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted (here) the defendants’ motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ options backdating related derivative suit, with leave to amend. The court had previously dismissed the plaintiffs’ initial complaint, with leave to amend.The February 12 decision related to the plaintiffs’ amended complaint. The court will allow the plaintiffs another opportunity to amend.

Westwood One: According to the company’s November 1, 2007 filing in Form 10-Q (here), on August 3, 2007, the N.Y. Supreme Court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ options backdating-related shareholders’ derivative suit. On September 20, 2007, the plaintiffs’ appealed the court’s dismissal and moved for “renewal” under relevant statutes. The appeal remains pending.

Clorox: According to the company’s November 1, 2007 filing on Form 10-Q (here), on October 27, 2007, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their options backdating-related derivative lawsuit in response to the recommendation of the company’s Board’s Audit Committee’s recommendation to the Board that the Board reject the plaintiffs’ suit demand, on the grounds that the suit was not in the best interests of the company.

Special thanks to Adam Savett of the Securities Litigation Watch blog for the information regarding the Westwood One and Clorox dismissals.

Headline of the Week: Still unexplained: why would anyone want TWO dead dogs?: From the February 16, 2007 Financial Times: “Ground-Dog Day as Woman Pays $50,000 to Clone Dead Pitbull” (here).

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In a prior post (here), I noted that the subprime meltdown story is no longer just about subprime, and that the crisis spreading to other types of credit could stretch the subprime litigation wave to areas outside of subprime. The lawsuit filed today against SLM Corporation (better known as "Sallie Mae") officially brought the subprime litigation wave to the student lending arena.

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On January 3, 2008, State Street Corporation announced (here) that for the fourth quarter of 2007, it will be establishing a reserve of $618 million, on a pre-tax basis, "to address legal exposure and other costs associated with the underperformance of ... fixed-income strategies managed by... the company's investment management arm." The net charge to the company, "after taking into account the tax effect of the reserve and associated lower incentive compensation cost" will be $279 million.

In its January 3 press release, the company did not identify the specific litigation to which the reserve will relate; rather, the company referenced only "customer concerns as to whether the execution of [the fixed-income strategies] was consistent with the customers' investment intent." The press release goes on to state that the strategies "were adversely impacted by exposure to, and the lack of liquidity in, subprime mortgage markets."

A January 4, 2007 New York Times article entitled "State Street Corp. Is Sued Over Pension Losses" (here) states that State Street decided to create the reserve "after five clients sued it, claiming they had lost tens of millions of dollars in State Street funds they were told would be invested in risk-free debt like Treasuries." The Times article briefly identifies four of the claimants, but adds that "it was unclear who brought the fifth suit."

Because of the possibility that, as stated in the Times article, that State Street's litigation and related reserve "highlight the legal challenges that lie ahead for financial firms," it would appear to be worthwhile to review here the five State Street lawsuits. The value of this exercise is underscored by the perception (which I share) voiced by one commentator quoted in the Times article that "there could be many, many more" lawsuits like those against State Street.

The first of the five lawsuits was brought on October 1, 2007 by Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company. (I previously posted about the Prudential lawsuit here.) A copy of the Prudential complaint can be found here. According to Prudential Financial's October 1, 2007 filing on Form 8-K (here), the action "seeks, among other relief, restitution of certain losses attributable to certain investment funds" sold by State Street's investment management arm, and alleges that State Street "failed to exercise prudent investment management." The specific legal basis of Prudential's claim is that State Street and its investment arm violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

The complaint alleges that the defendants "radically altered" the investment strategies of two bond funds, the Intermediate Bond Fund and the Government Credit Bond Fund. The complaint alleges that the funds "took undisclosed, highly leveraged positions in mortgage-related financial derivatives" and thereby "exposed" the funds to "an inappropriate level of risk" that during the summer of 2007 "produced catastrophic results." The complaint further alleges that as these events unfolded the defendants provided "untimely, incomplete and misleading information."

The Prudential complaint alleges that the defendants caused losses of "roughly $80 million" to assets held by about 165 retirement plans for which Prudential is responsible, affecting approximately 28,000 plan participants. The complaint seeks restitution and compensation for the investor losses (which Prudential has, according to an October 2, 2007 Wall Street Journal article, here, already reimbursed). The complaint also seeks recovery of fees and other amounts the defendants' received, as well as recovery of the plaintiff's attorneys' fees.

Of the five lawsuits against State Street in connection with which the company established its litigation reserve, three others (in addition to the Prudential lawsuit) allege violations of ERISA. The first of these three other ERISA lawsuits was brought on October 17, 2007 by Unisystems and the trustee of the Unisystems Employees' Profit Sharing Plan. A copy of the Unisystems amended complaint can be found here. (My prior post about the Unisystems complaint can be found here.)

The second of the three other ERISA lawsuits was brought on October 24, 2007 by the Composite Pension Trust of Nashua Corporation. A copy of the Nashua complaint can be found here.

The third of the three other ERISA lawsuits (and the fourth of the five total lawsuits brought against State Street) was brought on October 31, 2007 by the plan administrator and the trustee of the Employees' Savings and Profit Sharing Plan of the Andover Companies. A copy of the amended Andover Complaint can be found here.

The fifth of the five lawsuits against State Street (which is also the lawsuit which the Times was unable to identify) was brought on November 5, 2007 in Harris County, Texas, District Court by Memorial Hermann Healthcare System. On December 3, 2007, the defendants removed the Memorial Hermann complaint to the Southern District of Texas. A copy of the removal petition, to which the initial state court complaint is attached, can be found here. Unlike the four other State Street lawsuits, the Memorial Hermann complaint does not allege a violation of ERISA. Instead, the complaint asserts against the State Street defendants a variety of state law claims, including breach of contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation.

The Memorial Hermann complaint essentially alleges that the State Street defendants breached an "Agreement of Trust" to serve as trustee of nearly $91 million in the plaintiff's assets. The assets allegedly were invested in the State Street Limited Duration Bond Fund, which the complaint alleges lost 37 percent of its value during three weeks in August 2007, and 42 percent of its value for the 2007 year. The losses allegedly were the result of "unjustified investments in mortgage securities without diversification and using derivatives, all contrary to the stated Investment Objectives and representations."

UPDATE: In a later post, I discuss (here) a sixth lawsuit that has been filed against State Street.

The State Street lawsuits are significant in and of themselves, but also for what they might foreshadow. As I noted above, these lawsuits may well represent the kinds of legal problems that other financial services companies may face, particularly as the mortgages backing many of these investment funds and investment securities continue to detiorate.

There are a number of other important implications from the State Street lawsuits. The first relates to the identity of the claimants - these are very large institutions suing other very large institutions. These lawsuits are not the kind of lawyer-driven stock drop lawsuits that have drawn so much ire from would be reformers. These are conservative business litigants using plaintiffs' tools seeking to recoup significant losses. These sophisticated litigants may be unlikely to accept quick compromises, and, mindful of their own fiduciary obligations, may well be unwilling to accept any compromise that does not represent a very significant percentage of the losses.

The second important implication of the State Street lawsuits is the sheer magnitude of the dollars involved, as demonstrated by State Street's pre-tax set aside of $618 million for cases that are only in their earliest stages. The State Street litigation reserve underscores the staggering exposures that these cases and others like it represent. The stakes in these cases are enormous.

The third implication derives directly from the enormity of the financial exposures involved; that is, these cases clearly have very serious repercussions for liability insurers, a consideration discussed in a January 4, 2008 Dow Jones newswire article entitled "Subprime Litigation May Dent D & O Insurers Like Chubb, AIG" (here). The article's overall conclusion - that the subprime litigation wave may represent a significant concern for D & O insurers - is a valid point that I have in fact previously considered in a prior post (here). However, while I generally agree with the Dow Jones article's overall thrust, I do disagree with some the article's premises.

The most egregious of the article's faulty premises is that the State Street lawsuits represent a D & O insurance exposure. The article disregards the fact that four of the five State Street lawsuits are brought under ERISA. The typical D & O policy contains an ERISA exclusion, primarily because exposures under ERISA are covered under a separate fiduciary liability policy, not a D & O policy.

In addition, none of the five complaints name as a defendant any individuals; there are no director or officer defendants in any of these complaints (although there are John Doe defendants named without further identification in several of the complaints). The entity coverage under the typical D & O policy provide coverage only for securities claims against insured entities, and none of the five complaints raise securities law allegations.

So, contrary to the Dow Jones article's presumption, the State Street complaints do not themselves appear to embody any particular D & O insurance threat, as in their current forms at least, they would not appear implicate the typical D & O insurance policy. To be sure, the complaints may represent serious threats to fiduciary liability insurers and perhaps even to investment management errors and omissions (E & O) insurers, and to that extent the implication would seem to be that the subprime litigation wave represents a much more extensive threat to the insurance industry beyond just D & O. All of which does indeed suggest that the subprime litigation wave is a potentially complex and serious threat to insurers generally. To that extent, at least, the Dow Jones article is correct when it states that State Street's reserve "has increased concern that insurers offering policies covering such exposures could be hit with big claims from the credit crisis."

In any event, I do agree that the subprime litigation wave represents a threat to the D & O insurers, even if the State Street lawsuits themselves may not. My prior blog posts on the potential impact on D & O insurers from the subprime meltdown can be found here and here; even though I wrote these posts months age, the analysis still appears more or less valid.

It should also be noted that there have been a number of other subprime related lawsuits brought under ERISA, primarily by employees raising allegations relating to company stock held in the 401(k) plans. A list of these employee ERISA lawsuits may be found in my running tally of subprime-related litigation, here.




The January 6, 2007 New York Times has an article entitled "Testing Investors' Faith in State Street" (here) that examines the market's curious reaction to State Street's announcement concerning its litigation reserve -- its stock price went up, hitting a 52-week high, a response that Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson is at a loss to explain.



Now This: The American Dialect Society has chosen (here) "subprime" as the 2007 Word of the Year. Pondering this development, I was moved to reflect that the subprime meltdown has moved beyond a mere financial event; it has become a cultural, social, and even political phenomenon.


Like all important phenomena, the subprime meltdown has deep roots, which arguably go back to the early 80s when the market for mortgage securities was more or less invented at Salomon Brothers, as entertainingly retold in Michael Lewis's classic, Liar's Poker. Though the events described in Lewis's book took place over twenty years ago, they resonate now with irony and sometimes even ominous portent, although much of the current resonance was perhaps unintended when the words were originally written.


The most portentous segments detail the creation in the mid-80s of the recently eventful mortgage security, the collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO), about which Lewis notes, in words that contemporary investors in Norway, Japan, Australia and the U.K might now rue, that "CMOs opened the ways for international investors who thought American homeowners were a good bet." Lewis also notes, in an observation that seems particularly ironic today, that that as a result of the innovation of CMOs, "investors now had a new, firm idea of what the price of a mortgage bond should be." Lewis goes on to describe how the Wall Street Bankers "found a seemingly limitless number of ways to slice and dice home mortgages."


Space constraints prevent doing full justice to Lewis's account, so fraught with significance in light of today's circumstances. Suffice it to say that given recent events, Liar's Poker merits and rewards a re-reading. It is as entertaining as it ever was, but the description of the invention of the market for mortgage bonds seems to matter in ways that it did not previously.


Special thanks to loyal reader Matt Rossman, who pointed out Liar's Poker's newly relevant historical value some time ago - I only recently got around to following up on Matt's suggestion to re-read the book.

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As the latest of the year-end 2007 securities lawsuit reports (including my own, here), Cornerstone Research has released (here) its 2007 report on securities class action filings. Cornerstone's January 3, 2008 press release describing the report can be found here. The numbers in the Cornerstone report differ from those in the previously released year-end report of NERA Economic Consulting (here), but the numbers are directionally consistent. The Cornerstone report does make some additional observations about the 2007 securities lawsuit filings, and also adds some interesting analysis.

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 Updated November 12, 2011: As shown in the lists below, the lawsuits against subprime lenders are starting to mount up. This is hardly a surprising development; as the WSJ.com Law blog noted (here), law firms are already announcing their formation of subprime lending task forces and teams, just as a year ago law firms were announcing their formation of "options backdating teams." Along the same lines, on April 25, 2007, Law.com ran an article entitled "Subprime Crash May be a Boon to Attorneys" (here).

There is a growing list of lawsuits against subprime lenders arising from the deteriorating environment these companies face. The list is now sufficiently long that it seems to be time to create a running tally of the subprime lending lawsuits, as a complement to The D & O Diary's popular running tally (here) of the options backdating related lawsuits. I have linked below to the list of subprime lending lawsuits of which I am aware. This list may be incomplete, and I entreat readers to please let me know of any omission of which they are aware. I will endeavor to keep this list updated and will indicate any additions to the list in red. The legend "2008" indicates that the lawsuit was filed in 2008; items without a legend were filed in 2007.

Securities Class Action Lawsuits: To see the list of the 229 subprime related securities lawsuits, refer here. (Word Document)

NOTE ABOUT THE LIST OF CASES: As time has gone by, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain absolute categorical precision regarding what is a subprime related lawsuit. For example, the Care Investment Trust case noted above involved a mortgage trust that holds healthcare related assets. The allegation is that the company's prospectus failed to disclose the impairment of the value of certain of its assets and that the company was having difficulty obtaining warehousing financing for its investment activities. The company's woes are undoubtedly due to contagion in the credit market deriving from the subprime meltdown, but the company itself has no ties to the subprime industry. Owing to the connection of the contagion effect in the credit markets, I have included the case in the list. Reasonable minds might omit the case.

ERISA/401(k) Lawsuits:

1. Fremont General
2. Beazer Homes
3. Citigroup
4. Countrywide Financial Corp.
5. Merrill Lynch
6. UBS AG
7. Morgan Stanley
8. State Street
9. MBIA [2008]

10. Bear Stearns [2008]

11. Regions Financial Corporation [2008]

12. Huntington Bankshares [2008]

13. National City Corp. [2008]

14. Impac Mortgage Corp. [2008]

15. Sovereign Bancorp [2008]

16. Wachovia [2008]

17. First Horizon [2008]

18. PFF Bancorp. [2008]

19. Fannie Mae (2008)

20. Hartford Financial Services Group (2008)

21 Bank of America (2009)

22. IndyMac (2008)

23. American Express (2009)

24. Northern Trust Investments (2009)

25. Sterling Financial (2010)

Subprime lenders have also been sued in various lawsuits alleging that they engaged in deceptive or unfair trade practices. Recent examples involve the lawsuit pending against First Franklin Financial Corp. (here) and the lawsuit that Wells Fargo recently settled (here). While I will provide occasional updates on this post of these kinds of deceptive trade practices lawsuit, I do not propose to comprehensively catalog them here.

In at least one instance, an investment bank has been sued in connection with the bond securitization of subprime loans. According to news reports (here), Credit Suisse was sued by Bankers Life Insurance Co. in a lawsuit in which the insurer claims it lost money on the investment grade bonds backed by subprime mortgages the Credit Suisse had sold. The lawsuit generally pertains to the quality (or lack thereof) of the mortgages that backed the bonds.

There may well be other companies or kinds of companies adversely affected by the declining residential real estate market who find themselves facing securities class action or other lawsuits, as if so, I will update this post accordingly.

 

Readers are encouraged to suggest additional listings or references that should be added to this post.

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