Summary
U.S. courts approved more securities class-action settlements in 2016 than in any year since 2010, according to a report from Cornerstone Research.
The 85 settlements reached last year were just five more than the previous year. However, the aggregate dollar amount in the cases, just under $6 billion, was nearly double the 2015 total and the second-most in the past decade.
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The concentration of settlements’ dollar volume in a few cases is not unusual. “Class-action securities fraud litigation is a hit-driven business,” observes Joseph Grundfest, a professor at Stanford Law School. However, the number of mega-settlements as a percentage of all settlements was the highest in a decade.
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