When the soi-disant "Committee on Capital Markets" announced (here) on September 12, 2006 that it was forming an independent group of business and academic leaders to study how to improve the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets, the press coverage (here) generally presumed that the group would be focused on reforming the
Securities Litigation
Criminal Sentencing Perspective on Plaintiffs’-Style Damages Calculations
By Kevin LaCroix on
Posted in Securities Litigation
On September 22, 2006, Judge Sim Lake of the United States District Court in Houston re-sentenced former Dynegy tax executive and lawyer Jamie Olis to six years in prison for securities fraud, upon reconsideration after Olis’s initial sentence of 24 years that had been reversed on appeal. (Press reports of the resentencing may be found…
More Notes About the Milberg Weiss Indictment and the Declining Number of Securities Lawsuits
By Kevin LaCroix on
Posted in Plaintiffs' Bar, Securities Litigation
An August 4, 2006 Reuters article provides numeric support for the proposition, advanced in this prior D & O Diary post, that the declining number of securities fraud lawsuits is a consequence of the Milberg Weiss indictment. The article states that the indictment is "having a big impact on [the firm’s] ability to bring…
Declining Securities Lawsuit Frequency: A Cynical Explanation?
By Kevin LaCroix on
Posted in Plaintiffs' Bar, Securities Litigation
When the Cornerstone Research and the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse released their "2006 Mid-Year Assessment" earlier this week, the Report showed a 45% decline in the number of securities lawsuits filed in the first half of 2006 compared to the prior year period. According to the Report, the 61 securities class action…
Reports About Earnings Guidance, Securities Litigation Frequency, and The D & O Insurance Marketplace
By Kevin LaCroix on
Eliminate Quarterly Guidance? On July 24, 2006, the CFA Centre for Financial Market Integrity and the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics issued a Report entitled "Breaking the Short-Term Cycle: Discussion and Recommendations on How Corporate Leaders, Asset Managers, Investers and Analysts Can Refocus on Long-Term Value," calling on corporate leaders, asset managers and others…
Weak Signal, Dropped Call: The Vonage IPO Securities Litigation
By Kevin LaCroix on
Posted in Securities Litigation
Vonage Holdings Corp.’s May 24, 2006 IPO raised hundreds of millions of dollars of capital. It has also generated extensive negative press, as exemplified by the June 3, 2006 front-page article (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal entitled “How Vonage’s IPO Stumbled.” To add injury to insult, the company, several of its directors and…