Corporate & Securities Law

Wrapping it up, 26 November 2007

By Werner R. Kranenburg

Two articles of interest of today, in FTfm, the weekly Financial Times fund management insert, and this week’s The Lawyer.

The Lawyer reports that Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP, which currently counts 30 UK pension funds among its clients, aims to treble this number over the next 12 months. (Note, no word on a UK office or striking up alliances, just the intent on acquiring more clients.) It mentions the case against GlaxoSmithKline, in which Coughlin client Avon was appointed lead plaintiff (see last previous post on the case).

It was of course already apparent here that Coughlin was active as counsel to UK pension funds. More recently, Coughlin client Lothian fronted the complaint against Vodafone (previous post) and late last year London Pension Fund Authority joined a US client of the firm in the derivative action against BP (first previous post of several on that case, which since has been dismissed; the opinion will be discussed in a future post).

The FTfm article discusses the use of the US class action by European investors. It quotes, among others, RiskMetrics Group’s Adam Savett (of Securities Litigation Watch), René Maatman of Dutch pension fund ABP and Association of British Insurers‘ Michael McKersie. A quote:

?US judges seem prone to assume superiority on the uncertain presumption that EU courts will recognise US class action judgments or settlements,? says [Allen & Overy LLP’s Tim] House, who doubts that they will.

Full post as published by With Vigour and Zeal on November 26, 2007 (boomark / email).