Wolf Haldenstein is dedicated to protecting institutional and individual investors — including public pension funds, Taft-Hartley funds and health and welfare benefit funds — from corporate wrongdoing by litigating derivative claims to recover damages and to compel corporate governance changes. Wolf Haldenstein’s efforts in litigating derivative and corporate governance cases have resulted in billions of dollars of increased value for company shareholders in merger and acquisition cases as well as important corporate governance changes.
Traditionally, a corporation’s management is responsible for prosecuting claims on behalf of the corporation. However, when management fails to take action in the best interests of the corporation shareholders may bring a derivative action to assert the corporation’s rights and protect shareholder interests. Wolf Haldenstein has served as lead counsel in many Delaware corporate law cases in both federal and state courts brought to benefit companies involving mismanagement and corporate abuse to the ultimate benefit of its shareholders.
Derivative include breach of fiduciary duty claims against corporate directors in connection with change of control, squeeze out mergers, books and records requests, appraisal rights, mergers and acquisitions, insider trading, financial claw backs, self-dealing, accounting issues, shareholder voting rights claims, executive compensation, corporate waste, back dating of stock options and other similar transactions. Wolf Haldenstein’s experience in prosecuting securities violations, antitrust violations, financial and accounting malfeasance and labor violation enables our attorneys to draw on a vast body of knowledge and expertise in litigating derivative cases.
In addition to achieving significant monetary value for company shareholders, Wolf Haldenstein has also achieved significant corporate governance reforms for companies such as Tyson Foods Inc., General Motors Corp., and Verisign Inc,. Some corporate governance reforms, include, but are not limited, to the establishment of a nominating committee made up solely of independent directors, reduction in the number of inside directors, implementation of additional audit committee members and a general auditor, an audit committee investigation, general board membership changes, executive compensation recoupment policies, internal control changes, changes in the manner that options were granted to employees and an agreement to provide certain disclosures in their SEC filing and on their website.
Wolf Haldenstein’s Derivative Litigation Practice is fully supported by our Business Practice and Investor Protection practice groups, enabling our attorneys to leverage expertise in complex class actions, securities fraud, antitrust, unfair practices and corporate investigations to protect institutional investors.
