As noted in a prior post (here), trial in the Vivendi securities class action lawsuit began last week in the Southern District of New York. Thanks to the AmLaw Litigation Daily (here), the transcript of the opening arguments in the case are available here. The opening statements make for some interesting reading in and of themselves, and there are already a number of critical observations that may be made about this case.
Background
This case involves the financial impact on the company from the $46 billion December 2000 merger between Vivendi, Seagram’s entertainment businesses, and Canal Plus. The plaintiffs contend that as a result of this and other debt-financed transactions, Vivendi experienced growing liquidity problems throughout 2001 that culminated in a liquidity crisis in mid-2002, as a result of which, the plaintiffs contend, Vivendi’s CEO Jean-Marie Messier and CFO Guillaume Hannezo were sacked.
The defendants in the case include the company, Messier and Hannezo. The plaintiffs contend that the between October 2000 and July 2002, the individual defendants misled investors by causing the company to issue a series of public statements "falsely stating that Vivendi did not face an immediate and severe cash shortage that threatened the Company’s viability going forward absent an asset fire sale. It was only after Vivendi’s Board dislodged Mr. Messier that the Company’s new management disclosed the severity of the crisis and that the Company would have to secure immediately both bridge and long-term financing or default on its largest credit obligations."
Additional background regarding the case and the plaintiffs’ allegations can be found here.
A prior SEC enforcement proceeding against the company and the two former officers resulted, according to the SEC’s December 23, 2002 press release (here), in "Vivendi’s consent to pay a $50 million civil money penalty. The settlements also include Messier’s agreement to relinquish his claims to a €21 million severance package that he negotiated just before he resigned his positions at Vivendi, and payment of disgorgement and civil penalties by Messier and Hannezo that total over $1 million."
The Opening Statements
The lawyers making the opening statements on October 6, 2009 were: for the plaintiff class, Arthur Abbey of the Abbey, Spanier Rodd & Abrams firm; for Vivendi, Paul Saunders of Cravath, Swaine & Moore; for Messier, Micheal Malone of King & Spaulding; and for Hannezo, Martin Perschetz of Schulte, Roth & Zabel. The available transcript covers only the statements on the first day of trial, and does not include Perschutz’s opening argument, which took place the morning of the trial’s second day, so I have not discussed his opening argument below.
In his opening statement, Abbey tried to reduce the case to three points:
Number one, we are going to show you that Vivendi had growing problems during 2001 and the first half of 2002…and the problems that they had were with a thing called liquidity. Number two, they didn’t tell the truth about those problems….And the third thing that we will prove is that in the middle of 2002, the truth about Vivendi’s liquidity condition finally came out, and when that happened, unfortunately for my clients, the stock price fell and the investors that we represent suffered great losses. In a nutshell, that is why we are here today–a growing problem, failing to tell the truth, and then, like every lie, it finally comes out.
The overall theme of the plaintiffs’ case is that the defendants portrayed the company one way publicly, but another way internally:
Publicly, and I can’t stress this enough, defendants portrayed Vivendi as strong, healthy, and growing. They continuously downplayed the risks, the warnings, and they told the investing public how successful Vivendi was and would be in the future. But inside the company, behind the closed doors at Vivendi, the defendants were acknowledging a far different truth.
Among other things, Abbey referred to a "book of warnings" Hannezo supposedly compiled for the new CEO after Messier’s departure from Vivendi, which Abbey characterized as a collection of documents showing various forewarnings and admonitions Hannezo had send Messier and others about the company’s growing liquidity risks. Abbey read to the jury one note that Hannezo wrote to Messier at the end of 2001 following a meeting Hannezo had had with the rating agencies, in which Hannezo said "he felt like he was sitting in the death seat of a car that was accelerating in a sharp turn, and he didn’t want it to all end in shame." Abbey emphasized that while Hannezo had been communicating these warnings internally, they were not communicated to investors.
Abbey also argued in his opening that the company was under pressure to meet EBIDTA goals, and he further argued that the company was only able to report that it had met these goals by using, accounting adjustments (Abbey cited internal Vivendi documents referring to "accounting magic"), particularly "purchase accounting." Abbey told the jury that Vivendi never told investors the significant impact purchase accounting had on Vivendi’s reported results. He argued further that while use of accounting adjustments allowed the company to continue to report that it had met EBIDTA goals, the noncash adjustments did not help the company with its liquidity problems.
In support of the plaintiffs’ contentions, Abbey also referred to documents the company had filed in its severance dispute with Messier, in which the company supposedly said that Messier had driven the company "to the brink" yet had failed to disclose the problems to the company’s board.
Saunders, on behalf of Vivendi, argued that, contrary to the plaintiffs’ allegations about the company’s supposed liquidity problems, the company always had enough cash and credit to pay its bills, and in fact did pay all of its bills. He also argued that, contrary to the plaintiffs’ arguments that the defendants had misled investors, the company never had to restate its financials, even after new management came in. Saunders also emphasized that within days of his arrival, the new CEO completed a financing of over $1 billion, which, Saunders argued, demonstrated that even at the peak of the supposed crisis the company had sufficient resources (including credit) to pay its bills.
Saunders also argued that far from representing anything sinister, the company’s use of "purchase accounting" was only entirely appropriate, it was in fact required as a result of the three-way merger.
Saunders conceded that the company did have difficulties during the class period, but largely as a result of the September 11 tragedy and the following decline in economic activity (particularly at the company’s theme park properties). In that regard, he compared Vivendi’s stock price decline to the stock graphs of companies that the plaintiffs’ own expert had said were comparable, and that the stock graphs were virtually indistinguishable.
Finally, Saunders explained the two individuals’ departures from the company as a result of disagreements over the strategic steps the company should take in response to the business challenges it was facing, including a dispute between the board and Messier over whether Vivendi should sell its heirloom French water utility business.
Malone, arguing on behalf of Messier, contended that the plaintiffs’ case depended entirely on discrete "snippets" take out of context from a wide variety of documents, but that when the statements were put back in context, they show only the ordinary activities of business people struggling to deal with day to day business challenges. Malone emphasized the case is not about whether or not the company had problems or even about whether or not there were errors of judgment, but only about whether or not there had been an intentional effort to mislead investors.
Malone also emphasized that when Messier exercised stock options at the end of 2001, he invested all of the proceeds in Vivendi shares, and even took out a bank loan to buy additional shares. Messier also invested his entire April 2002 bonus in Vivendi shares, and indeed, within days of leaving Vivendi, Messier invested even more in Vivendi shares. Malone argued that Messier never sold a share, and that when Vivendi’s share price collapsed, no individual lost more than Messier.
Observations
Though the transcript only represents the arguments of counsel and not the actual presentation of evidence, a number of themes clearly emerge.
First, this case will be complex and will require the jury to grapple with a host of daunting technical terms and concepts. Just in his opening, Abbey referred to EBIDTA; purchase accounting; debt service; noncash earnings; nonoperational accounting entries; free cash flow; liquidity; and dividends. Saunders referred to negative cash flow; generally accepted accounting principles; and market capitalization. Malone referred to options exercises; hedging and hedging transactions; and tax advantages.
It is not that juries are incapable of figuring out these kinds of things. The problem is that these kinds of things put an enormous burden on the lawyers, the witnesses and the court to keep things clear; to avoid letting the trial get bogged down in technical minutiae; and making sure the jury it neither confused nor bored to death.
Second, much has been made (for example, here) of the fact that this Vivendi case is so unusual because it is the first "f-cubed" case to go to trial – that is, it involves claims against a foreign-domiciled company by foreign claimants who bought their shares on foreign exchanges. Whatever else might be said about whether or not f-cubed cases ought to be heard in U.S courts, it is clear just from the attorneys’ opening statements that there are serious challenges involved in attempting to put on one of these cases in a U.S. court. All of the lawyers wrestled with problems, for example, involving currency conversions and language translations. Abbey in particular seemed to experience embarrassment and discomfort using French names and phrases. The lawyers also warned that much of the testimony and many of the documents are in French for which the jury would be given English translations.
In addition, the opening statements also showed the complications that will arise from differing accounting systems, different account practices and standards, and different accounting conventions.
Third, all of the lawyers’ opening statements underscore the problems any plaintiff would face when large unrelated but material events – such as the 9/11 tragedy and the dot-com crash – happened at the same time as the supposed events of which the plaintiffs were complaining. Abbey tried to anticipate these issues and explain the plaintiffs’ theory of how these events should be understood in the context of the plaintiffs’ case. The defense counsel, for their part, showed that the defendants will argue that the challenges the company faced can only be understood within the context of these external events, which are, the defense counsel contend, among the root causes of the company problems involved in the case.
The parallel to the challenges facing the plaintiffs in the current round of subprime and credit crisis-related cases is unmistakable. The plaintiffs in these more recent cases will face the same challenge of attempting to explain how company-specific rather than marketplace-wide developments led to the defendant companies’ problems.
The final observation from a reading of the transcript is that the trial of a complex matter like a class action securities case is an elaborate, time-consuming, pain-staking exercise that could quickly become mind-numbingly tedious. Just judging from the opening statements, the jury could be in for a very long slog. One can only imagine how the jurors’ hearts sank when they heard Messier’s counsel tell them in his opening statement that "this trial will go on for months."
Nor will the verdict of this jury bring an end to this matter. Not only will there likely be further proceedings in this case, but as a result of the court’s class certification ruling in this case excluding Austrian and German investors from the plaintiff class, this case may only be the first of the trials in this matter. As reported in an October 7, 2009 article in the Telegraph (here), the defendants could face a "second trial" brought on behalf of European investors excluded from the plaintiff class in the Southern District of New York. (Hat tip to the 10b-5 Daily, here, for the Telegraph article link).
In my earlier post about the Vivendi trial, I noted how rare trials are in securities class action lawsuits. In an October 8, 2009 post (here) on his Enforcement Action blog, Bruce Carton (also the author of the Securities Docket blog), interviewed Adam Savett of the Securities Litigation Watch blog. In the brief interview, hosted on the Enforcement Docket site, Savett reviews statistical data regarding the prior securities cases that have gone to trial, and discusses why trials in these cases are so rare. He also discusses the significance of the presence of the f-cubed claimants.
They’re a Page Right Out of Hist-oh-Ree: Even allowing for the fact that The Flintstones show was set in the Stone Age, the program advertisement linked below still seems deeply primitive. Clearly, prehistoric peoples had a longer attention span, as the commercial seems almost movie-length compared to its more modern counterparts.
And even allowing for the time lapse since those long ago days, the advertisement’s politically incorrect premise and tobacco-related message seem vestiges of a culture completely unrelated to our own.
Finally, the way that Fred and Barney are sneaking around together and hiding from their wives, you do start to wonder whether the final line in the show’s theme song lyrics implied more than might originally have been suggested.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oc1TBBp4dC8%26hl%3Den%26fs%3D1%26