The Dangers of Relying on Custodians to Collect Class Action Settlements
Institutional investors—including public pension funds, Taft-Hartley funds, mutual funds, and hedge funds—have a fiduciary obligation to recover monies lost through investments in public securities as the result of corporate mismanagement and/or fraud. These losses are often recouped through class action litigation, which pays out billions of dollars to defrauded investors each year.[1] When these lawsuits are settled, however, institutional investors often assume that their custodian will file a claim and collect the funds on their behalf. Unfortunately, this approach almost always leaves such institutions short, and benefits more savvy-minded institutional investors who often pick-up the money left on the table by those relying on their custodians.