Securities Litigation & Investor Protection

Powerful advocates for corporate accountability.

When companies commit fraud or executives breach their fiduciary duties, we partner with investors to hold the wrongdoers accountable – pursuing class or derivative actions that recover significant monetary damages and achieve meaningful change.

We have returned billions of dollars to defrauded shareholders through the development of groundbreaking legal theories, efficient and effective case-management techniques, zealous advocacy, and skillful litigation.

We have achieved some of the largest securities class action settlements in history, including the historic, all-cash $1 billion settlement against Wells Fargo, now the 17th largest securities class action settlement of all time and the 6th largest in the last decade; and the $500 million Bear Stearns Mortgage Pass-Through Certificates Litigation, one of nine cases we led that recouped more than $2.5 billion for investors in mortgage-backed securities. We also represent shareholders of publicly traded companies in derivative lawsuits that hold accountable corporate leaders who breach their fiduciary duties, harming the company and investors. We crafted settlements with Alphabet ($310 million), Wynn Resorts ($90 million), L Brands ($90 million), and other companies that combined large financial commitments with sweeping corporate governance reforms aimed at preserving long-term shareholder value.

We work with our colleagues in the Antitrust practice to represent institutional investors in class actions that use the antitrust laws to break big banks’ costly stranglehold on the multi-trillion-dollar markets for stock lending, interest-rate swaps, and other opaquely traded financial products. Our work doesn’t stop at the U.S. borders. Drawing on a deep expertise, we help investors determine their best approach to pursuing foreign securities cases. The counsel we selected for our clients in a case against Fortis N.V. in Belgium achieved the largest ever non-U.S. securities settlement, €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion).

Beyond litigation, we provide customized and comprehensive portfolio monitoring and case evaluation services to approximately 200 institutional investors. All of our portfolio monitoring services are performed exclusively in-house and designed to ensure clients meet their fiduciary obligations to their members by making informed choices when faced with substantial losses and in determining whether to remain an absent class member, seek lead plaintiff status, or opt-in to foreign litigation. 

Our work on behalf of investors has earned thanks from our pension fund clients, respect from opposing counsel, and praise from judges.  

  • California Superior Court Judge Brian C. Walsh said our “groundbreaking” $310 million settlement in the Alphabet Derivative Litigation codified a “best in class approach … to address sexual harassment sexual misconduct, discrimination, retaliation, inequity and inclusion in the workplace.”  He called the result “a credit to what … your profession can do to solve a problem.” 
  • And in approving the $335 million RALI MBS settlement, U.S. District Judge Katherine P. Failla praised Cohen Milstein’s prescience and perseverance in pursuing the case: “I don’t want to demean this by saying that fortune favors the brave, but that is what happened here,” she said.  “Plaintiffs’ counsel took on an enormous amount of risk and stuck with it for nearly seven years.”

Current Cases

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Stock Loan Antitrust Litigation

Iowa Public Employees Retirement System, et al. v. Bank of America Corp., et al. (S.D.N.Y.): Cohen Milstein is co-counsel in this groundbreaking putative class action, in which investors accuse Wall Street banks of engaging in a group boycott and conspiring to thwart the modernization of and preserve their dominance over the $1.7 trillion stock loan market. On September 4, 2024, the court granted final approval of a historic $580 million cash settlement and significant injunctive relief against defendants Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, UBS, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, and EquiLend. Litigation against Bank of America continues.

Set Capital, et al. v. Credit Suisse Group AG, et al.

Set Capital, et al. v. Credit Suisse Grp. AG, et al. (S.D.N.Y.): Cohen Milstein is Co-Lead Counsel in this path-breaking securities class action alleging fraud and market manipulation of XIV Exchange Traded Notes. On March 17, 2023, the court certified one of three proposed investor classes.

In re EQT Corporation Securities Litigation

In re EQT Corporation Securities Litigation (W.D. Pa.): Cohen Milstein is Co-Lead Counsel in this securities class action, in which Plaintiffs allege that EQT misrepresented the “substantial synergies” that were expected to arise from a planned merger with rival natural gas producer Rice Energy due to “the contiguous and complementary nature of Rice’s asset base with EQT’s.”

Past Cases

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HEMT MBS Litigation

HEMT MBS Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): $110 million settlement with Credit Suisse. Cohen Milstein was lead counsel in a case alleging Credit Suisse and its affiliates sold toxic securities to pension fund investors. The suit, filed in 2008, was one of the first class action cases involving mortgage-backed securities to be filed.

In re Harman International Industries, Inc. Securities Litigation

In re Harman International Industries, Inc. Securities Litigation (D.D.C.): Cohen Milstein obtained a precedent-setting ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, reversing the dismissal of the case by the lower court, protecting investors by limiting the scope of protection afforded by the so-called “safe-harbor” for forward-looking statements in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. On September 28, 2017, the court granted final approval of a $28.25 million settlement.

Harborview MBS Litigation

New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund, et al., v. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, PLC (S.D.N.Y.): Cohen Milstein was lead counsel in this a certified MBS class action against the Royal Bank of Scotland involving certain Harborview Mortgage Loan Pass-Through Certificates. On November 4, 2014, the court granted final approval a $275 million settlement. Presiding Judge Loretta A. Preska of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York commended the Cohen Milstein team on a “job well done.”