Litigation Issues in Distribution of Securities: An International Perspective

This book is based upon the papers presented at a joint session of the International Litigation and Securities Committees of the Section on Business Law at the 1995 International Bar Association conference in Paris. The chapters in this book are collected under five broad topics: disclosure and misrepresentation, conflicts of interest, class actions, damages and international enforcement. The first two topics focus on liability and the remaining three topics deal with procedural and remedial issues. Given the prevalence of securities litigation in the United States as compared to other jurisdictions, a particular effort has been made to obtain a comprehensive set of papers on American aspects of these topics. These will be of interest to anyone who has a need for a more detailed understanding of the American regulatory and litigation process as it relates to securities offerings. At the same time, other significant capital markets, including Australia, Canada, England, France, Japan, Korea, Spain, Switzerland and The Netherlands are also well represented.

The collaboration of litigation and transactional lawyers in these pages, as in practice, is necessary to produce a fuller understanding of the role, effectiveness and limitations of civil liability as a tool for the regulation of entrepreneurial behaviour in the securities marketplace. This book provides a superlative resource for anyone who wishes to make a comparison of the approach which a variety of significant jurisdictions have taken to these issues. However, the real objective of the book and of the Paris conference on which it is based has been to provide practitioners who are dealing with securities offerings on an international basis with practical information and guidance. Many of the chapters could readily serve as comprehensive and definitive reference works for practitioners in the same jurisdiction as the authors.