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Kaplan Fox is court appointed lead counsel, on behalf of Lead Plaintiff Bricklayers and Trowel Trades International Pension Fund, in the case against Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Credit Suisse (USA), Inc., Frank Quattrone, Elliott Rogers, Jamie Kiggen and Laura Martin (“Defendants”) arising out of materially false and misleading analyst reports issued by Credit Suisse regarding AOL Time Warner (“AOL”) between January 12, 2001 and July 24, 2002.
Plaintiffs allege that Defendants’ AOL reports publicly touted the stock, depicting the company as rising above the withering advertising downturn and “achieving huge share gains” in the ad market, despite their true beliefs that the company was in precarious financial condition and would miss Defendants’ public projections. Moreover, Defendants allegedly received nonpublic information concerning accounting improprieties and undisclosed layoffs at AOL which they did not disclose – accounting issues which ultimately led to a massive restatement and criminal prosecutions of key AOL executives. CSFB’s dishonest and misleading analyst reports caused AOL’s stock price to be inflated at the beginning of the class period, but as negative financial information slowly trickled into the market from various sources and undermined CSFB’s misrepresentations, the true value of AOL stock became clear.
The class has been certified in this litigation, and the parties are currently awaiting decision on the fully briefed and argued summary judgment motions. Additionally, expert preclusion motions are fully briefed and awaiting the Court’s decision or scheduling of oral argument.
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