According to the latest report from ISS Securities Class Action Services, there were two court-approved securities class action lawsuit settlements in 2025 large enough to make the firm’s annual list of the Top 100 U.S. Class Action Settlements. These two 2025 settlements took place in a year in which the number of cases resolved, average and median settlement amounts, and even the number and total value of “mega settlements” ($100 million+) all declined compared to 2024. The details of the 2025 court approved settlements, including with respect to the two largest of the year, can be found in the ISS SCAS report, here.

The 115 court-approved U.S. monetary securities class action settlements in 2025 represents a 15% decrease from the 136 settlements in 2024. The aggregate total value of the 2025 settlements also declined, to an even greater extent than the decline in the settlement numbers might otherwise suggest. The total value of the 2025 settlements was $3.58 billion, compared to $4.75 billion in 2024, representing a decline of nearly 25%.

The average settlement amount also declined, to $31.1 million in 2025, from $34.9 million in 2024, representing a decline of about 11%. The median 2025 settlement was $13 million, slightly below the 2024 median securities-related settlement of $13.5 million.

During 2025, there were eight “mega settlements” ($100 million+) totaling more than $1.6 billion, representing about 45% of the year’s total. By contrast, in 2024, there were ten mega settlements, collectively amounting to more than $2.4 billion, or about half of the aggregate value of the 2024 settlements.

Of the 115 U.S. court-approved monetary securities class action settlements in 2025, two were large enough to make the all-time Top 100 list, contributing $796 million in aggregate value, or about 20% of the total 2025 securities class action settlement value. The two cases that made the list are the Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. settlement of $433.5 million, good enough for 48^th on the all-time list; and General Electric Co. settlement of $362.5 million, good enough for 56^th on the all-time list. (By way of comparison there were four settlements in 2024 that were large enough to make the all-time list.)

Readers may be interested to know that the 2025 average time to settlement (representing the duration of the full case lifecycle from initial complaint to final settlement approval) was 3.5 years, slightly shorter than the 3.7 years average in 2024.

Readers may also be interested to know just how big a securities class action lawsuit settlement has to be to make the Top 100 list. The answer is $200 million – in other words, even a nine-figure settlement less than $200 million is not big enough to make the list. Indeed, a settlement of $1 billion is not even good enough to make the top ten list, unless it exceeds $1.142 billion. (A $1 billion settlement would in fact tie for 17^th on the list.)  A settlement would have to come in over $500 million just to come in 32^nd on the list.

Because there are actually five cases tied for the 100^th spot on the list (at $200 million), the Top 100 list actually includes 104 settlements. Of the 104 settlements on the list, 95 had institutional investor lead plaintiffs, while nine had non-institutional investor lead plaintiffs.

Among the plaintiffs’ law firms, the plaintiffs’ firm with the most cases on the list in which the firm served as lead counsel or co-lead counsel is the Bernstein Litowitz firm, which has 37 cases on the list (include three of the top ten), followed by the Robbins Geller firm, which has 24 of the settlements on the list (including three of the top ten). The Bernstein Litowitz firm also has cases on the list that aggregate to the highest value from among the settlements on the list, totaling $27.3 billion, followed by the Robbins Geller firm, with cases on the list totaling $20.1 billion. The Robbins Geller firm’s cases include the largest settlement of all time, the Enron case, which had total settlements of $7.242 billion.

In terms of settlements on tap to receive possible court approval in 2026, there are several settlements announced in 2025 that seem poised to make the list this year: the $740 million Didi Global, Inc. (which would be good enough for 24^th on this year’s list); the Rivian Automotive $250 million (good enough to tie for 83^rd on this year’s list); the $239 million Celgene settlement (good enough for 86^th on this year’s list); and the $210 Fidelity National Information Services settlement (good enough to tie for 97^th on this year’s list). Although it is not big enough to make the list, the $179 million Acadia Healthcare settlement also likely will receive court-approval in 2026. These five settlements alone combine for $1.6 billion. Due to these and other considerations, the ISS SCAS report suggests that 2026 could “outperform” 2025, and even possibly 2024.

Special thanks to Donald Grunewald of ISS SCAS for providing me with a copy of the Top 100 report. Don is the Director of Litigation Analysis at ISS SCAS.