Even after Merrill Lynch’s recent $550 million settlement of the subprime-related securities and ERISA lawsuits pending against the company (about which refer here), the consolidated subprime-related derivative lawsuit against the company’s directors and officers remained pending. By contrast to the massive settlements in those other lawsuits, the derivative litigation was recently dismissed, because of the company’s January 2009 acquisition by Bank of America.

 

In a February 17, 2009 opinion (here), Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the derivative action. The defendants had argued that as a result of the Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill in a stock-for-stock transaction, the plaintiffs are no longer Merrill shareholders and therefore lack standing to pursue the derivative actions as filed. Judge Rakoff granted the motion in light of the requirement under Delaware law for a derivative plaintiff to show "continuing ownership."

 

In his opinion, Judge Rakoff expressly noted that the dismissal "is without prejudice to plaintiffs’ filing with this Court, if and when they have standing, a renewed action, recast as a derivative action against Bank of America, or as a so-called ‘double derivative action, or otherwise, but based on the same underlying allegations as the actions here dismissed." (As reflected here, a "double derivative action" is a lawsuit in which a shareholder of a parent corporation brings an action on behalf of a wholly owned subsidiary for alleged wrongs to a subsidiary.)

 

The subprime-related derivative litigation involving Countrywide was also dismissed, following Bank of America’s acquisition of Countrywide, based on the requirement that derivative plaintiffs must demonstrated continuing ownership in order to have standing to assert the derivative claim, as reflected here and here.

 

Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill is itself now the subject of extensive securities litigation, as discussed here.

 

A February 20, 2009 Law.com article discussing the dismissal in the Merrill subprime-related derivative litigation can be found here.

 

Second Stanford Financial Lawsuit Alleges Madoff Connection: As noted in a prior post (here), the same day as the SEC announced that it had launched a civil enforcement proceeding against R. Allen Stanford, the Stanford Financial Group and related entities and individuals, aggrieved investors also launched a securities lawsuit against many of the same entities and individuals in the Southern District of Texas.

 

A second lawsuit has now been commenced in the Southern District of Texas against the Stanford International Bank and related Stanford entities. Among other things, the second complaint expressly alleges a connection between the Madoff scandal and the new Stanford Financial scandal.

 

As reflected in the plaintiff’ lawyers February 19, 2009 press release (here), the action is brought "on behalf of purchasers of Stanford International Bank Ltd. ("SIB") certificates of deposit ("CDs") or shares in SIB’s Stanford Allocation Strategy proprietary mutual fund wrap program ("SAS") between February 19, 2004 and February 17, 2009."

 

According to the press release, the Complaint (which can be found here), alleges that the defendants

 

fraudulently peddled CDs that promised rates of return far above those available from other banks. Defendants claimed that these superior returns were possible because SIB invested its deposits rather than loaning them. To ensure that depositors could redeem their CDs, defendants assured them that SIB’s investments were liquid and diversified. In fact, nearly 80% of SIB’s investments were concentrated in just two high-risk, illiquid categories: private equity and real estate. Now that the real estate and private equity markets are in free fall, many of those who purchased SIB’s CDs have recently been informed that they cannot redeem them.

 

The complaint also alleges with respect to the defendants mislead investors about the SAS program. The complaint alleges that the defendants

 

picked a handful of mutual funds that had performed extremely well in 1999-2004 and claimed the returns of those high-performing funds as the historical returns of the SAS program. Defendants also inflated the claimed returns of the SAS program in 2006 and 2007. Investors, misled by defendants’ claims of historic returns, have fared very poorly in the SAS program.

 

The complaint also alleges that the defendants misled investors about SIB’s exposure to the Madoff scandal. The complaint alleges that the bank sent investors a letter

 

unequivocally stating that "Stanford International Bank did not have any exposure to the Madoff Fund." Just two days before this letter was sent, an SIB analyst informed all three of the individual defendants, including R. Allen Stanford ("Stanford"), that SIB had invested in Meridian, a New York-based hedge fund that used Tremont Partners as its asset manager. Tremont, in turn, had invested a portion of Meridian’s – and SIB’s – money with Madoff.

 

The two fraud schemes seem to have come together as if they were subatomic particles drawn by some unwritten law of physics.

 

The Sox First blog has an interesting post here on the parallels between the Madoff and Stanford scandal.

 

Yet Another Bank Closure: By contrast to the last several Friday nights in a row, the FDIC did not assume control of multiple banks following their closure by regulatory authorities. Rather than multiple banks, this Friday the FDIC announced that it had assumed control of just a single bank.

 

As reflected in its February 20, 2009 press release (here), the FDIC assumed control of Silver Falls Bank of Silverton, Oregon. Prior to its closure, the bank had assets of approximately $131.4 million.

 

The closure of the Oregon bank already brings the 2009 year to date total of bank failures to 14 (by contrast to the 25 banks that failed during all of 2008). As I have recently noted (here), the surging bank failure levels has some very troublesome implications, and the now standard Friday bank closure announcement is one more reflection of the current challenging financial circumstances.

 

Auction Rate Securities: Balance Sheet Valuation Concerns: With all the long-standing publicity surrounding the difficulties in the auction rate securities markets, and the extensive related litigation, you might expect that companies with balance sheet exposure to auction rate securities had long since adjusted the securities’ carrying values to reflect the current market conditions. But according to a recent study, many companies with auction rate securities exposure have yet to make any accounting adjustments.

 

As reported in a February 20, 2009 CFO.com article (here), a recent study of 625 corporate auction rate securities holders found that 186 of them, or nearly 30 percent, continue to report them at par value. The study’s author is quoted as saying that "there’s still an awful lot of companies out there that are not properly accounting for [the auction rate securities]."

 

These companies failure to recognize their balance sheet exposure to auction rate securities could represent a significant litigaton risk factor. There have already been at least one securities lawsuits against a nonfinancial company that included allegations based on the company’s alleged failure to disclose its exposure to auction rate securities (refer, for example here). Companies delaying their recognition of this exposure could be exacerbating an already serious concern. The delay potentially could represent a heightened litigation risk.