The first half of 2015 saw a maximum dollar loss from federal class-action securities cases of $105 billion, 65 percent below the historical semiannual average, according to Cornerstone Research, and the 10th straight period of lower-than-average losses in market capitalization for defendant firms.
The consultancy’s 2015 Midyear Assessment of securities class-action filings, co-authored with Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, showed 8 percent fewer filings overall in the period from the second half of 2014, a pace that would lead to the seventh straight year of below-average activity.
The analysis also showed a “sharp decline” in filings against biotechnology, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, and a rebound in those against industrial and technological firms to historical averages.
Filings against foreign companies, meanwhile, continued to increase, rising to 24 percent in the first half of 2015 from a rate of 20 percent for all of 2014, the study showed. More than half the targets were Asian, with most of these based in China.
To be sure, the representation of foreign firms on major US exchanges has doubled since the turn of the century, when the companies accounted for 9 percent of listed companies, the study said. But the percentage of foreign companies sued relative to their total number on US exchanges has also risen, to 3.9 percent in the first half of 2015 from 1.4 percent in 2000.
