The latest report from ISS Securities Class Action Services ranked the top 50 plaintiffs firms by dollar value of final class action settlements completed in 2019, with Bernstein bringing in $711.5 million and Robbins Geller $561.3 million. The Rosen Law Firm PA and Entwistle & Cappucci LLP took third and fourth with sums over $400 million.
"We are proud to once again lead the industry in securities class action recoveries for investors," Bernstein managing partner Jerry Silk told Law360. "BLB&G has finished first or second in every edition of SCAS' annual rankings since the report's inception, which is a testament to the hard work and dedication that our team brings to our clients and cases year after year."
Robbins Geller's second-place ranking comes despite the firm leading the pack in the number of settlements closed in 2019, with a total of 17 compared to Bernstein's eight and Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP's 13, the second-highest total.
Having already secured more than $2.5 billion in three settlements from January alone, Robbins Geller is on pace to lead 2020, especially with global financial markets roiled in recent weeks by the coronavirus pandemic.
"A good stock market can hide a lot of financial misdeeds," Darren Robbins, a founding partner at the firm, told Law360 in an email. "But once the tide recedes, we see what's been lurking at the bottom."
The report notes that the 116 securities class action settlements approved in U.S. federal, state and Canadian courts in 2019 yielded only $3.21 billion for investors, down from $6.1 billion in 2018 — a drop that ISS executive director Jeff Lubitz said was "not a surprise" in light of 2018's landmark $3 billion Petrobras deal. No settlements in 2019 topped $1 billion, and only nine firms surpassed the $100 million mark.
"Without a megasettlement throughout 2019, it was going to be close to impossible for any law firm to achieve the $1 billion threshold of settlements," Lubitz told Law360.
That said, the number of newly filed cases shot up dramatically in 2019 from 584 to an all-time record of 650, according to the report.
The biggest deal in 2019 belonged to Bernstein, which recovered $389.6 million for Cobalt International Energy investors who accused the Houston-based oil and gas company of overpromising on its Angolan oil wells and concealing murky dealings with Angolan officials. Entwistle & Cappucci was co-lead counsel on the litigation, propelling it to fourth place in ISS' 2019 ranking despite it securing less than three settlements throughout the year.
Alibaba Group Holding's $250 million settlement of claims that it misled investors prior to its initial public offering netted Rosen Law $62.5 million in fees last October and helped push it into a third place finish, while Walmart Inc.'s $160 million settlement of bribery allegations a year ago helped land Robbins Geller second place.
Bernstein and Robbins Geller have both placed in the top three of ISS' total settlement value rankings in each of the seven years since the report started publishing.
The report also specifies that of the 116 settlements reached in 2019, only 105 provided a monetary recovery, of which 74 dealt with alleged securities fraud through manipulation and deception and 22 addressed registration statement discrepancies. 17 of the cases involved IPOs, 16 involved mergers and acquisitions, and six were related to alleged violations of generally accepted accounting principles.
--Editing by Alanna Weissman.
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