F3: Securities class actions around the world after Morrison

Abstract

Institutional investors globally are increasingly recognising the need to monitor and respond to the now many different securities class action and group investor action systems around the world, to recoup investment losses arising from corporate (or adviser) non-disclosure, misrepresentation or fraud. Securities class actions started in the United States, still in volume terms the main home of class actions, but have spread quite rapidly to other jurisdictions around the world. The US Supreme Court's Morrison decision in 2010 that sought to exclude so-called ‘foreign-cubed’ investors from US cases has accelerated the export of the class action style process to other jurisdictions and increased shareholder class action activity outside the United States. Whereas the US class action process is somewhat familiar (at least to some investors), the variety of processes outside the United States is less well known and the landscape continues to change rapidly. This article looks at some of the selected non-US jurisdictions to give a brief introduction to the new evolving global class action landscape.