According to the latest annual report from ISS Securities Class Action Services, there were four court-approved securities class action settlements in 2024 large enough to make the firm’s list of the Top 100 U.S. Securities Class Action settlements. These settlements took place in a year in which there were 136 court-approved monetary securities class action lawsuit settlements totaling over $4.7 billion. The details of the 2024 court approved settlements, including with respect to the four largest during the year, can be found in the ISS Securities Class Action Services report entitled “The Top 100 U.S. Class Action Settlements of All-Time” (as of December 31, 2024), here.
The 136 securities suit settlements in 2024 represents a 7% increase in the number of settlements over 2023 (126). But while the total number of settlements increased in 2024, the aggregate total of the settlement amounts decreased. The approximately $4.7 billion in aggregate 2024 securities suit settlements was down 18% from the aggregate total in 2023 (approximately $5.7 billion). However, it should be noted that 2023 was a “banner year,” in that it included two outlier, billion-dollar settlements. (Please note that none of these settlement figures include antitrust settlements, SEC fair funds distributions, and settlements outside the United States.)
While the number of settlements increased in 2024, the average settlement amount decreased by 26%, to $34.9 million, compared to approximately $47.1 million in 2023. Again, the average settlement amount in 2023 was driven by the two large outlier billion-dollar settlements. The report notes that the 2024 average “was very close to that in 2022, which implies that 2024 was simply an example of the reversion to the mean.” The 2024 median securities-related settlement was $13.5 million.
Of the 136 settlements in 2024, 98 settlements representing $3.76 billion received court approval in federal courts, while the remaining cases totaling $985 million received court approval in state court. (Based on disclosures in prior years’ reports, it can be noted here that many of the state court settlements relate to corporate transactions, including cases involving breach of fiduciary duty allegations.)
The average time to settlement for the 2024 securities class action lawsuit settlements, measured by the time of filing of the initial complaint to the final approval of the settlement, was 3.7 years, while the median time to settlement was 3.1 years.
Of the 136 securities class action settlements that received court approval in 2024, four were large enough to make the Top 100 list: Apple, $490 million (tied for 34th on the list); Under Armour, $434 million (discussed here, 47th on the list); Alphabet, $350 million (discussed here, 56th on the list); and Uber ($200 million, tied for 98th on the list). These four settlements together total $1.474 billion, or over 30% of the total value of the 2024 securities suit settlements.
In all, there were ten mega settlements in 2024 (that is, with a value equal or greater than $100 million), collectively amounting to more than $2.4 billion, or approximately half of the aggregate value of the 2024 securities suit settlements.
Readers may be interested to know how big a settlement has to be to make the Top 100 list. In fact, the 2024 Uber settlement, mentioned above, just squeaked onto the list as part of a four-way tie for the 98th spot at the end of the list. In other words, a nine-figure settlement of less than $200 million is not good enough to make the list. Indeed, a settlement of over $1 billion will not even make the Top Ten unless it exceeds $1.142 billion. (The $1 billion 2023 Dell Technologies settlement comes in tied for number 17.) A settlement would have to come in at over $500 million just to earn a spot in the top 32.
Because there are four cases tied for the 98th spot (at $200 million), the Top 100 list actually includes 102 settlements. Of the 102 settlements on the list, 96 had an institutional lead plaintiff and only eight had a non-institutional lead plaintiff. The court with the highest number of settlements on the list is the Southern District of New York, with 40 settlements.
Among the plaintiffs’ law firms, the plaintiffs’ firm with the most cases on the list in which the firm served as lead counsel or co-lead counsel is the Bernstein Litowitz firm, which has 37 cases on the list, followed by the Robbins Geller firm, with 24. The Bernstein Litowitz firm also has cases on the list that aggregate the highest value from among the settlements on this list, totaling $27.3 billion, followed by the Robbins Geller firm, with cases on the list totaling $20.1 billion. The Robbins Geller firm’s cases include the largest case of all times, the Enron case, which had total settlements of $7.242 billion.
As noted, the aggregate settlement figures discussed above exclude antitrust settlements, SEC fair funds settlements, and settlements outside the United States. Adding these excluded settlements to the U.S. securities class action lawsuit totals brings the overall 2024 total to about $6.2 billion. Among these other types of investor recoveries in 2024 was the settlement in the Stock Loan Transaction antitrust lawsuit, which settled for approximately $580 million. (The report includes a table showing that the Stock Loan Transaction antitrust lawsuit settlement, as large as it is, qualifies only for the fifth largest antitrust class action lawsuit settlement. The largest antitrust class action settlement is the Foreign Exchange Benchmark Rates antitrust lawsuit settlement, at approximately $2.3 billion.)
The report also includes a table showing the top 50 SEC disgorgement cases. Interestingly, none of the top 50 disgorgement cases were resolved in 2024. Indeed, a separate table shows that no cases have been added to the top 50 disgorgement cases list since 2022 (when one case was added). The largest disgorgement on the list is the $800 million in the 2008 AIG action. In order to make the Top 50 list, a future SEC disgorgement order would have to exceed $85.3 million.
In terms of the possible Top 100 settlements in 2025, there are two announced settlements that are likely to receive final approval in 2025: Alibaba ($433.5 million, which would qualify for 48th on the current list, just ahead of the $434 million 2024 Under Armour settlement); and General Electric ($362.5 million, which would qualify for 55th on the current list). In addition, and though not large enough to make the Top 100 list, the $102.5 million VMWare settlement, the $85 million Windstream/Earthlink settlement, and the $70 million Wynn Resorts settlement are likely to receive final court approval in 2025.
Special thanks to Donald Grunewald of ISS SCAS for providing me with a copy of the Top 100 report. Don is the report’s Managing Editor.