The June issue of The Review of Securities & Commodities Regulation (Vol. 38, No. 11) contains an excellent overview of the law surrounding the use of confidential sources. The article, entitled “Anonymous Sources in Securities Class Action Complaints,” is authored by John Henn, Brandon White, and Matthew Baltay and provides a circuit-by-circuit analysis.
Monthly Archives: July 2005
Scienter and Rule 10b5-1 Trading Plans
Whether trading under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan can help shield corporate executives from securities fraud liability is a topic that courts continue to explore.
Rule 10b5-1, put into place in 2000, establishes that a person’s purchase or sale of securities is not “on the basis of” material nonpublic information if, before becoming aware of the information, the person enters into a binding contract, instruction, or trading plan (as defined in the rule) covering the securities transaction at issue. To take advantage of this potential affirmative defense, many executives have implemented trading plans for their sales of company stock.
Insider trading, of course, is often used by plaintiffs in securities class actions to create an inference of scienter (i.e., fraudulent intent). The plaintiffs allege that the individual corporate defendants profited from the alleged fraud by selling their company stock at an artificially inflated price. In the latest decision to consider the impact of Rule 10b5-1 trading plans on insider trading scienter allegations, the court in In re Netflix, Inc. Sec. Litig., 2005 WL 1562858 (N.D. Cal. June 28, 2005) found that the fact that the trading in question took place pursuant to a trading plan mitigated against a finding of an inference of scienter.
The author of The 10b-5 Daily has written an article (with one of his colleagues) on this topic.
Filed under Motion To Dismiss Monitor
Off To The Races
No sooner does France announce that it may permit class actions than the first securities class action appears. Reuters reports that a French lawyer has launched a class action against Vivendi Universal on behalf of small shareholders. The company already faces a similar suit in the U.S.
Quote of note: “‘Until now, no one has had the courage to do this’ in France, Canoy told Reuters. ‘But why can the Americans do certain things and not the French?'”
Filed under All The News That's Fit To Blog
Second Circuit To Hear IPO Allocation Appeal
The IPO allocation cases (brought against the underwriters of over 300 initial public offerings) generally allege that the defendants ramped up trading commissions in exchange for providing access to IPO shares and required investors allocated IPO shares to buy additional shares in the after-market to help push up the share price. Last year, Judge Scheindlin (S.D.N.Y.) granted class certification in six “focus” cases that have been used to test the sufficiency of the overall allegations.
A reader points out that the Second Circuit has agreed to hear an appeal from that grant (by order dated June 30, 2005). Moreover, the court has specifically asked for briefing on two hot-button issues:
(1) Whether the Second Circuit’s previous position that plaintiffs are only required to make “some showing” that the proposed class comports with all of the elements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 is consistent with the 2003 amendments to that rule.
(2) Whether the presumption of reliance established in Basic v. Levinson, 485 U.S. 224 (1988) (i.e., the fraud-on-the-market theory) was properly extended to plaintiffs’ claims against the non-issuer defendants and to the market manipulation claims.
The Second Circuit has come close to addressing the scope of the fraud-on-the-market theory before, but was thwarted by a settlement. The resolution of this issue has wide-ranging implications for securities fraud litigation. Take a look, for example, at The 10b-5 Daily’s discussion of two opposing district court decisions in cases brought against research analysts. Stay tuned.
Filed under Appellate Monitor
The 10b-5 Daily 