Securities Class Actions Hit Record High in First Half of 2017

By Antoinette Gartrell, Bloomberg BNA

A record number of would-be class securities fraud suits — 226 — were filed in the first half of 2017, according to a Cornerstone Research and the Stanford Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse report released July 25.

The number of new lawsuits is the highest for the first half of any year since enactment of the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which heightened class securities fraud pleading requirements. It’s also a 49 percent spike from the second half of 2016, the data showed.

In the past six months, 4.7 percent of U.S. exchange-listed ...