As usual, NERA Economic Consulting and Stanford Law School, in cooperation with Cornerstone Research, have released reports looking back at the year’s securities fraud class action activity (NERA press release, report; Stanford press release, report).
In its latest annual report, NERA does not separately track or comment on filings against foreign issuers, except for a footnote on the Vivendi trial (p. 11). Stanford does. (Both reports are discussed in-depth by learned friends at the 10b5 Daily (here and here) and D&O Diary and elsewhere, such as at the AmLaw Daily and Bloomberg.)
In Stanford’s 2009 Mid-Year Assessment the Class Action Filings-Foreign Index (CAF-F Index) was introduced, which tracks filings against non-US issuers relative to total filings. It found that “[t]he frequency of filings against issuers with non-U.S. headquarters has increased in recent years” from 6.8% of filings during 1997 through 2003, to 13.3% of filings during the next five years, peaking at 13.8% (31 filings) in 2008. This is all the more noteworthy since “the share of foreign companies listed on the major U.S. exchanges [NYSE and NASDAQ] has actually decreased” from 13.3% to 10.7% between 2002 and 2008. (p.7)
A key finding of its year-end report is however that “[a]fter peaking at 16.4 percent in 2007, the percentage of filings against foreign issuers declined to 13.5 percent in 2008 and to 12.4 percent in 2009.” (p.11)
What’s more: in Canada, class action filings will be up this year (Financial Post, thanks to AB Data); also see NERA’s Trends in Canadian Securities Class Actions (study).