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SECURITIES LITIGATION

BVA’s professionals have extensive experience providing consulting assistance and expert testimony in securities matters such as:

  • Shareholder class actions and opt-out claims, including those pursuant to Rule 10b-5, Section 11, and similar frameworks involving alleged fraudulent acts, misrepresentations, and omissions that caused investors to suffer losses through the purchase of securities on the secondary market or participation in IPO;
  • Regulatory enforcement and investigations, including allegations of insider trading, market manipulation, accounting misrepresentations, and other alleged securities fraud;
  • M&A litigation and valuation disputes, including shareholder appraisal rights;
  • Litigation involving complex securities and derivatives, such as residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), futures, options, swaps and other financial contracts.

Our professionals have testified on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants in support of economic analyses related to damages, loss causation, share price inflation, market efficiency, price impact, and civil penalties.  In addition, we are routinely engaged for the purpose of assessing and critiquing economic arguments offered by opposing experts.  

Shareholder Class Actions & Opt-Outs
  • Estimated share price inflation arising from the materialization of allegedly concealed risks by a publicly traded operator of private prisons, including adjustments for changes in the company’s operations and corporate structure.
  • Provided expert and rebuttal opinions regarding IPO and secondary market share price inflation on behalf of a former Australian electronics retail chain, including damages calculations for thousands of individual group members based on a class-wide damages model.
  • Prepared market efficiency and price impact analyses in support of class certification on behalf of common stock investors in numerous publicly-traded companies.
  • Estimated share price inflation and damages attributable to opt-out investors’ allegations that a publicly traded entertainment company concealed and misrepresented the impact of negative media attention following a documentary film.
  • Estimated common law fraud and Section 11 damages related to a American Depository Shares of a Chinese coffee company arising from alleged false statements in the company's SEC filings.
Regulatory Enforcement & Investigations
  • Provided expert analysis and testimony on behalf of fund advisor in response to SEC investigation of internal valuations of RMBS investments.
  • Presented expert analysis and opinions on behalf of financial advisor in response to SEC allegations of a cherry picking and trade allocation scheme.
  • Provided analysis on behalf of fund advisor in response to SEC enforcement investigation of marking practices and performance disclosures.
  • Provided reports, deposition, and jury trial testimony on behalf of a corporate employee and associates facing criminal insider trading charges related to acquisition of energy infrastructure firm.
  • Advised US Department of Justice on investigation into alleged misrepresentations of risk and fraudulent activities within mortgage-backed security collateral pools.
  • Provided testimony on behalf of US government pursuing mortgage-backed securities claims under FIRREA and the FCA.
Complex Securities & Derivatives Litigation
  • Provided expert opinions and testimony on behalf of class of investors alleging traders manipulated NYMEX crude oil futures and options prices and spreads by monopolizing the market for physical WTI crude oil.
  • Supported world’s largest cotton trader to rebut plaintiffs’ experts’ claims of physical and derivatives market manipulation.
  • Provided testimony on damages on behalf of RMBS certificate holders across dozens of Trusts associated with repurchase and servicing damages claims.
  • Computed repurchase and rescissory damages on behalf of monoline insurer related to a mortgage originator’s alleged breach of underwriting guidelines on thousands of loans.
  • Computed damages on behalf of investors in Puerto Rican municipal bond funds.  
  • Assessed damages claims associated with alleged mismarking of complex natural gas forward contracts.
M&A Litigation & Valuation Disputes
  • Evaluated damages to FinTech derivative exchange platforms in context of allegations of market foreclosure by large broker-dealers. 
  • Estimated lost profits to cryptocurrency mutual fund advisor from subadvisors breach of contract and alleged theft of trade secrets.
  • Quantified the foregone control value of a publicly traded company due to management's alleged failure to relinquish control of the board of directors following a proxy battle.
  • Computed damages to GSE shareholders caused by US Treasury and FHFA implementation of Net Worth Sweep; provided testimony at trial on behalf of shareholder plaintiffs.