1. Protecting Investors: Securities litigation helps investors in their fiduciary responsibility to seek financial compensation for losses resulting from securities fraud or misconduct. By holding wrongdoers accountable, it deters fraudulent activities and promotes market integrity.
2. Enforcing Compliance: Securities litigation enforces compliance with securities laws and regulations, ensuring that companies and individuals adhere to disclosure requirements and ethical standards in their financial dealings.
3. Promoting Transparency: Securities litigation can uncover hidden risks, misrepresentations, or conflicts of interest that may impact investors’ decisions. This transparency is essential for maintaining trust in the financial markets.
4. Enhancing Corporate Governance: Securities litigation can target corporate governance failures, such as breaches of fiduciary duty or conflicts of interest among corporate insiders. Holding company officers and directors accountable can lead to improved governance practices.

Securities litigation in Sweden can be done in various ways, through class/group actions, derivative actions, or regulatory enforcement actions (by authorities). Case law in the sphere of private enforcement is historically scarce but will now hopefully start to emerge. A historic reason is probably that Sweden as a civil law country lacks statutory rules regulating civil liability in relation to improper securities activities.

In the Ericsson case, 37 institutions are claiming roughly $200 million from the issuer in the district court of Solna, Sweden. The claimants state they have suffered investment losses since Ericsson withheld information about potential bribes paid to the terrorist organisation ISIS in Iraq, that caused the share price to fall. The claimants are all large (non-Swedish) institutional investors, and the case is funded by a third-party funder (not Deminor). The case will be tried in the first instance court in 2025.

The legal community expects to see an increase in litigation related to securities in the coming years, to paint a picture in 2021 there where was one (1) initial public offering every second day (157 in total). In 2022-23 there were only a handful of initial public offerings each year. Sweden has a disproportionate number of listed companies compared to other EU countries and it is considered a national sport to invest in the stock market. A majority of listed shares are held by local and foreign sovereign wealth funds, they seldom engage in litigation locally but often participate in international cases in the US and elsewhere. The economy is currently in a recession which has historically always led to an increase in the number of disputes.

Deminor is the only international funder with a local presence that focuses on securities litigation. On paper there are plenty of opportunities in Scandinavia, but in practical terms cases are often too “small” meaning the quantum of the potential loss the investor has suffered is not sufficient to initiate the litigation. Or which is more often the situation, the investors that do hold a significant part of the shares (the loss) are not willing to engage in litigation for various reasons. The claimants that are willing to lead the way in terms of creating the much-needed case law is the types we see in the Ericsson case, foreign institutional investors.

We could summarize the situation with a phrase coined by the advertising industry for when there was a minute of silence before the next add was supposed to run - watch this space!

The Nakiki SE announces that it has signed a Letter of Intent to acquire a portfolio of so-called casino and sports betting lawsuits with a disputed value of approximately EUR 6.3 million (plus interest of at least EUR 800,000, as well as additional costs). Nakiki SE or one of its subsidiaries intends to take over an existing portfolio of lawsuits instead of pursuing individual lawsuits as announced in the ad hoc announcement of April 17, 2024. The individual lawsuits mentioned in the ad hoc announcement of April 17, 2024, will not be financed for the time being.

According to German case law from various legally binding decisions, players have a claim for reimbursement of gambling losses, as online casinos largely operated illegally until 2021. The lawsuits to be financed by Nakiki or Legal Finance are based on this legal perspective. A ruling from the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is still pending.

In the event of the acquisition of the portfolio and a successful outcome of the litigation, Nakiki or a financing subsidiary is entitled to up to 25% of the litigation success.

Darrow, the leading legal intelligence platform, today announced the launch of Darrow’s PlaintiffLink platform for mass arbitration.  With tens of thousands of plaintiffs already uniquely vetted on PlaintiffLink, the platform offers unparalleled quality of service for law firms in the pursuit of justice. 

PlaintiffLink is a revolutionary plaintiff-connecting tool for law firms, now built to support the complexity of mass arbitration cases. PlaintiffLink enables attorneys to plan, review, and approve potential clients through a centralized portal. It allows attorneys to connect with the large volumes of clients needed for mass arbitration. Using the platform, attorneys can gain data driven insights that power effective filing strategies and streamlined case management, backed by Darrow’s top-tier legal consultancy. 

“PlaintiffLink provides a cutting-edge solution to the risks and costs associated with mass arbitrations, and makes it easier for attorneys to promptly connect with the tens of thousands of clients needed for these types of cases,” said Evyatar Ben Artzi, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Darrow. “We’re committed to delivering technology that helps victims connect with the best law firms to ensure justice is served, even in the most complex matters that require expert attention.”

PlaintiffLink addresses the biggest barrier for attorneys considering mass arbitration cases: connecting with a large volume of qualified plaintiffs and managing them seamlessly. Through a centralized portal, attorneys can now leverage PlaintiffLink to connect with tens of thousands of thoroughly vetted, qualified plaintiffs needed for arbitrations. The service operates on a unique contingency model, shifting financial risk away from attorneys.

“We’ve built a dedicated solution to enable visibility into client cohorts in a single matter  so that attorneys can effectively file and manage cases,” said Gila Hayat, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Darrow.

PlaintiffLink enables lawyers to swiftly review through thousands of individual clients. Users can drill down into specific claim cohorts, download raw CSV data files containing all details about each claim, and review insight reports to get a more visual and statistical analysis of the case. PlaintiffLink also employs a comprehensive review process, with two tiers of expert vetting, to streamline client acquisition and reduce invalid claims. 

Darrow is committed to delivering products that drive firm growth and profits per partner, and it is planning additional releases throughout 2024 to support its users.

For more information, visit: https://darrow.ai 

About Darrow

Founded in 2020, Darrow is a legal tech company on a mission to fuel law firm growth and deliver justice for victims. Darrow's AI-powered justice intelligence platform leverages generative AI and world-class legal experts and technologists to uncover egregious violations across legal domains spanning privacy and data breach, consumer protection, securities and financial fraud, environment, and employment. Darrow is based out of New York City and Tel Aviv.

Australia has an adversarial legal system in which the Courts apply active case management discipline throughout the life cycle of each proceeding. This generally provides that civil and commercial cases have a timely and predictable trajectory to mediation and hearing. In addition, most jurisdictions operate in accordance with the ‘loser pays’ principle, meaning that the litigant who loses the case must pay the opponent’s legal costs; this provides a strong incentive for both sides to settle prior to hearing. Finally, the legality of third-party funding is well-established in Australia, and we have a mature class action jurisdiction with a strong thread of precedent legitimating funders’ entitlement to directly share in claim proceeds, subject to the Court’s satisfaction with the fairness of such arrangements on a case-by-case basis.

Some of the major trends in the industry involve an increased regulatory push, the inclusion of insurance products, funders getting more involved in arbitration and mass torts, etc. Which major global trends would you say are most salient in the Australian market, and which are less applicable? 

Regulation of litigation funding in Australia peaked in 2020-21, under the previous federal parliament. Reforms included extending the consumer protections available to investors in managed investment schemes (MIS) to participants in class actions, and a proposed minimum return to class members. Both reforms were in search of an actual systemic problem and proved redundant in practice, and were ultimately revoked by the successive parliament upon taking office in early 2022.

CASL’s due diligence process for potential investments doesn’t focus solely on the legal arguments of a claim, it also involves an assessment of whether the litigant and their legal team will be sufficiently aligned with CASL’s commercial objective to achieve a feasible resolution as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

With that in mind, claims that have sound legal merits may still represent an uncommercial proposition to CASL for three main reasons. Firstly, the amount of funding required for the legal costs estimated to run the matter may be disproportionate to the likely size of the claim; often this will be a factor in cases that involve many defendants. Secondly, there may be particular characteristics of a case that entail a substantial potential for delay in achieving resolution; this could include novel legal issues which increase appeal risk, or litigants prone to intractable rather than commercial conduct. Finally, we may be unable to reach an acceptable level of confidence in the defendant’s capacity to meet a settlement or judgment sum.

Generally speaking, CASL’s approach is to assess each claim on its own merits, as we don’t perceive certain types of claims as inherently riskier than others, and don’t target a particular composition of the portfolio by claim type.

Whilst class actions typically have a longer life cycle than other types of case, that of itself does not increase their relative risk profile; in any class action, as indeed any type of case, the level of risk will primarily arise from the underlying legal and factual questions the Court is being asked to determine. For that reason, we gauge concentration risk in the portfolio by reference to the existence of any overlap in the legal questions being litigated across existing investments, rather than by type of case.

The litigation finance industry is a reflection of the evolution of the civil justice system rather than a driver itself. The civil justice system is adapting and responding to a growth in disputes arising in areas such as privacy and data breaches, consumer claims including product liability, and climate including greenwashing. These types of claims are prominent or growing in other jurisdictions throughout the world, and Australia will benefit from these experiences or will lead the development of such claims given the strength of the legal system and its capacity to adapt.

As a result of the global relevance of certain claims, the law firms and funders are forging closer relationships across borders to ensure the efficient prosecution of claims.

Inevitably the law plays ‘catch-up’, but it is vitally important that law firms and funders continue to push legislators to design effective laws to require accountability, responsibility and high levels of governance within the social fabric to benefit society as a whole.