|  | | 2007 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
Top Ten D & O Stories of 2007
Kevin LaCroix
The D & O Diary. December 26, 2007
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EXCERPT: With the year-end fast approaching, it is time to take a look back and review the top D & O stories of 2007. It was an eventful year, with some important developments that will have implications for the year ahead, and perhaps for years to come. Here are the top stories, with the year’s most important story leading the way. 1. Subprime Meltdown Launches Litigation Wave: When I first started tracking subprime-related litigation in April (here), I already knew that the subprime meltdown was going to be an important story. By July (here), I knew that the subprime story was "this year’s model"—that is, the hot litigation trend being driven by the business scandal most prominent at the time. By August, I wrote (here) that the developing story had become "All Subprime, All the Time." But even at that point, I don’t think I really appreciated what the subprime story would become. I certainly didn’t envision that it would lead to a surge of lawsuits against some of the giants of the financial services world, such as Merrill Lynch (refer here), Citigroup (refer here), Washington Mutual (refer here), and UBS (refer here). … 2. Two-Year Lull in Securities Filings Comes to an End: In mid-year 2007 studies, NERA (here) and Cornerstone (here) both observed that securities filings had been well below historical averages since mid-2005. Stanford Law Professor Joseph Grundfest questioned (here) whether or not there might have been a "permanent shift" to a lower level of securities lawsuit filings. … 3. Supreme Court Issues Tellabs Decision: The Supreme Court does not take many securities cases; for that reason, and because the Tellabs case had the potential to significantly affect the threshold resolution of many securities cases, the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Tellabs case was much anticipated. When the Tellabs opinion finally came out in June 2007, it was a victory for defendants, although perhaps not as extensive a defense victory as it could have been, as detailed further here and here. |
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