Saturday, May 11, 2013
Klausner et alia on D&O Insurance in Securities Class Actions
How Protective is D&O Insurance in Securities Class Actions? — An Update, by Michael Klausner, Stanford Law School; Jason Hegland, Stanford Law School; and Matthew Goforth, Stanford Law School, was recently posted on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Nearly all securities class actions that are not dismissed settle. Very few are tried to judgment. Who pays into settlements — the corporation, its directors and officers, or its D&O carrier? Companies buy D&O insurance in order to protect themselves and their directors and officers from liability. But D&O policies have exclusions, limits, retentions, and other terms that might result in the carrier paying less than the full amount of a settlement. So, as an empirical matter, who pays when a company settles? We provide some basic statistics on that question, which reveal that in fact D&O insurance is quite protective. Focusing on individual officers’ contributions to settlements, we find that these are quite rare, even in cases in which the SEC has imposed a serious penalty on the same individuals for the same misconduct.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/securities/2013/05/klausner-et-alia-on-do-insurance-in-securities-class-actions.html