Litigation

Do securities lawsuits help shareholders?

By Ted Frank

Not quite, says a study in the Financial Analysts Journal by Rob Bauer and Robin Braun. If a suit is for something other than illegal insider trading, the long-term effects of litigation for shareholders are not good, despite the fact that many cases involve injunctive relief with supposed corporate governance improvements. I've long theorized that most injunctive relief in class action settlements is for the benefit of attorneys to claim that they accomplished something when they are unable to obtain pecuniary relief; the fig-leaf of trivial changes allows the attorneys to claim fees. Coverage from Fisher @ Forbes, Frankel @ Litigation Daily ($), WSJ Law Blog, and Coyote via OL.

Full post as published by Point of Law on January 05, 2011 (boomark / email).