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PurchasePro.com Summary: According to a Press Release dated December 4, 2001, the lawsuit asserts claims under Section 11, 12 and 15 of the Securities Act of 1933 and Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 promulgated by the SEC thereunder and seeks to recover damages. The complaint alleges that PurchasePro and certain of its officers at the time of its IPO violated the federal securities laws by issuing and selling PurchasePro common stock pursuant to PurchasePro's initial public offering and a secondary offering of PurchasePro stock without disclosing to investors that several of the underwriters of the PurchasePro IPO had solicited and received excessive and undisclosed commissions from certain investors. In exchange for the excessive commissions, the complaint alleges, defendants allocated shares of PurchasePro stock to certain investors at the IPO price of $ 4.00 per share. (All stock and price data herein reflect both PurchasePro's 3:2 and 2:1 stock splits to stockholders of record as of December 1, 1999 and September 29, 2000, respectively.) To receive the allocations (i.e., the ability to purchase shares) at $4.00, the defendant IPO underwriters' brokerage customers had to agree to purchase additional shares in the aftermarket at progressively higher prices. The requirement that customers make additional purchases at progressively higher prices as the price of PurchasePro stock rocketed upward (a practice known on Wall Street as laddering) was intended to (and did) drive PurchasePro's share price up to artificially high levels. This artificial price inflation, the complaint alleges, enabled both the defendant IPO underwriters and their customers to reap enormous profits by buying PurchasePro stock at the $4.00 IPO price and then selling it later for a profit at inflated aftermarket prices, which rose as high as $10.17 during its first day of trading. Rather than allowing their customers to keep their profits from the IPO, the complaint alleges, the defendant underwriters of PurchasePro's IPO required their customers to kick back some of their profits in the form of secret commissions. These secret commission payments were sometimes calculated after the fact based on how much profit each investor had made from his or her IPO stock allocation. The complaint also alleges that PurchasePro and the defendant underwriters of the secondary offering of PurchasePro stock (Credit Suisse First Boston Corporation, Bear, Stearns & Co., Inc., FleetBoston Robertson Stephens, Inc. and certain underwriters of the IPO) were able to price the secondary offering at an artificially high$40.00 per share due to the continued effects of the foregoing violations. The complaint further alleges that defendants violated the Securities Act of 1933 because the Prospectuses distributed to investors and the Registration Statements filed with the SEC in order to gain regulatory approval for the PurchasePro offerings contained material misstatements regarding the commissions that the underwriters would derive from the IPO and failed to disclose the additional commissions and laddering scheme discussed above.
INDUSTRY CLASSIFICATION:
SIC Code: 7389
Sector: Technology
Industry: Computer Services
| COMPANY/ISSUER NAME: | PurchasePro.com, Inc. |
| COMPANY/ISSUER TICKER: | PPRO |
| COMPANY WEBSITE: | http://www.purchasepro.com |
| FIRST IDENTIFIED COMPLAINT IN THE DATABASE | |||||||||||||||||
| Collegeware USA, Inc. v. PurchasePro.com, Inc., et al. | |||||||||||||||||
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REFERENCE COMPLAINT | |||||||||||||||||
| In Re Purchasepro.Com, Inc. Initial Public Offering Securities Litigation | |||||||||||||||||
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| DOCUMENTS FOR THE REFERENCE COMPLAINT | |||
| Amended Class Action Complaint For Violations Of The Federal Securities Laws | |||
| Type: Complaint | Date on the document: 04/19/2002 | ||
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