Securities and Antitrust
—Chambers and Partners USA (2024)
Fishman Haygood has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors, issuers, and other market players in litigation and arbitrations across the nation.
We have represented individuals, companies, pension funds, hospitals, cities, and states in securities, investor fraud, and antirust matters. While many of our cases arise in Louisiana, we frequently handle cases across the country, and we are often consulted by other lawyers who do not regularly handle securities and antitrust litigation. We also represent numerous individual investors in FINRA arbitrations who have suffered losses as a result of fraud or malfeasance by their advisors or brokers, including one of the largest awards in FINRA history.
Previous plaintiffs include investors in securities who have lost money on misrepresented or fraudulent investments, issuers of securities who have been misadvised to issue manipulated or fraudulent products, such as auction rate securities, and purchasers who have been harmed by monopolistic or other anticompetitive conduct. Most recently, we represented the Official Stanford Investors Committee and individual Stanford investors with claimed damages exceeding $5 billion, resulting from the infamous Stanford International Bank certificate of deposit Ponzi scheme. Settlements totaling $1.6 billion were reached with five bank defendants on the eve of trial.
We also have represented hundreds of individual investors against their brokers or investment advisors, recovering hundreds of millions of dollars for these clients. The firm is currently lead counsel prosecuting securities fraud claims against Raymond James, as underwriter of over $330 million of public finance municipal bonds used to construct a wood pellet manufacturing facility in Urania, La.
As technology advances, and financial products evolve, so too does our securities and antitrust practice. Our firm is one of the first in the country to file cases involving innovations such as cryptocurrency and special purpose acquisition companies (“SPACs”). For example, we hold several leadership positions on the plaintiffs’ steering committee and other committees in the FTX multidistrict litigation, pursuing claims on behalf of FTX customers who lost more than $8 billion in the FTX fraud.
Representative Experience
Recent:
Cryptocurrency Cases
- Represent international and US classes of customers who collectively lost more than $8 billion in the FTX cryptocurrency fraud perpetrated by Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX insiders in claims against alleged third party aider-abettors, including multinational venture capital firms and sovereign wealth funds, international and domestic banks, law firms and other professional service providers. The FTX cases have been consolidated in In re FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange Collapse Litigation, Case No. 1:23-md-03076-KMM; Fishman Haygood serves on the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee and chairs several other committees in the MDL.
- Represent holders, both in the United States and abroad, of BNB and BUSB, cryptocurrencies issued by Binance, for losses sustained from the unregistered and fraudulent sales of the currencies to plaintiffs and in connection with Binance’s $4 billion guilty plea in late 2023, in class action against Binance Defendants, including Binance’s former-CEO, and celebrity promoters for violations of state blue sky statutes and other law.
- Represent nationwide classes of customers who purchased unregistered securities and/or enrolled in an “Earn Program Account” offered by the Voyager cryptocurrency exchange in class action against Voyager and certain third-party aider-abettors, including Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks, for violations of state blue sky statutes and other law.
Securities & Shareholder Cases
- Represent the Official Stanford Investors Committee and individual Stanford investors with claimed damages exceeding $5 billion, resulting from the infamous Stanford International Bank certificate of deposit Ponzi scheme; settlements totaling $1.6 billion were reached with five bank defendants on the eve of trial.
- Represent investors of TS Innovation Acquisitions, Inc. (“TSIA”), a special purpose acquisition company or “SPAC”, in suit alleging breach of fiduciary duty against TSIA’s directors and controlling shareholder arising from TSIA’s acquisition and merger of a company whose share price dropped following its reporting to the SEC that its financial statements were unreliable and needed to be restated. Fishman Haygood serves as co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the matter, one of the first SPAC cases in the U.S., and which has been consolidated with similar suits in the Delaware Chancery Court.
- Represent the liquidation trustee as assignee of a multinational pellets manufacturing conglomerate’s securities fraud claim, totaling more than $300 million, against Raymond James in connection with the largest public bond issuance in the State of Louisiana for the construction of a wood-pellets manufacturing facility in Urania, Louisiana.
- Represent investors harmed by an alleged “spoofing” scheme to manipulated the S&P 500 options market traded on the Chicago Board Options Exchange in 2015.
Antitrust Cases
- Represent individual physicians associations who provide health benefits to the people of Puerto Rico, where diabetes affects 20% of the population, in claims against drug manufacturers Eli Lilly, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, and pharmacy benefit managers CareMark PCS, Express Scripts, and OptumRX, for losses sustained from defendants price-fixing and other anticompetitive conduct to artificially inflate the price of insulin products in Puerto Rico, in violation of the Puerto Rico Antitrust Act.
Noteworthy:
- Representation of Baylor College of Medicine in an arbitration against its bond underwriter arising from Baylor’s issuance of $525 million of auction rate securities, obtaining a favorable settlement following a two-week arbitration.
- Representation of the Louisiana Stadium & Exposition District in litigation over its issuance of $238 million of auction rate securities with accompanying interest rate swaps to finance post-Katrina reconstruction of the Superdome, defeating a motion to dismiss in the Southern District of New York and obtaining a favorable settlement.
- Representation of Lake Hospital System, Inc. in an arbitration against its bond underwriter arising from Lake’s issuance of $155.5 million of auction rate securities, obtaining a favorable settlement.