Institutional Investors and Family Offices

Discovering and Recovering Investor Losses for Institutional Investors and Family Offices for More than 50 Years

Wolf Haldenstein has been representing institutional investors (including public pension funds, Taft-Hartley funds, mutual funds, and hedge funds), individual investors, and family offices for more than 50 years, helping to protect their valuable assets and recover losses from securities violations and other corporate wrongdoing.  The firm is nationally recognized for litigating complex securities class actions as well as shareholder derivative and corporate governance cases that have resulted in significant recoveries and protections for investors. Wolf Haldenstein has recovered more than $7 billion for shareholders and its efforts have achieved significant corporate governance changes and increased value for shareholders. The firm also provides guidance to clients on a variety of complex investment matters and advice on best practices for protecting their assets.

Wolf Haldenstein provides specialized Portfolio Monitoring and Securities and Shareholder Litigation Services to its institutional investor and family office clients.

Portfolio Patrol

To meet the particular needs and circumstances of our clients, Wolf Haldenstein offers family offices two different portfolio monitoring services: active monitoring and passive monitoring. Portfolio Patrol is Wolf Haldenstein’s 24/7, fully secure online portfolio monitoring system that is customized for each client. The firm provides these services at no cost to our institutional investor and family office clients.

Active Monitoring

Through Wolf Haldenstein’s comprehensive active portfolio monitoring program, the firm performs real-time reviews of news, press releases, and financial information for any events that impact the institutional investor and family office client’s investments.

How it works:

• Each investor gives Wolf Haldenstein secure and confidential read-only access to its custodial accounts or a confidential list of holdings (including purchases and sales of publicly traded securities), typically covering a period of at least five years.

• Our highly experienced staff conducts customized reviews and ongoing monitoring of news, press releases, financial information, and stock market prices for relevant developments and changes affecting each client’s own portfolio of publicly traded securities.

• The firm also reviews all newly filed state and federal class actions and shareholder derivative actions.

• If Wolf Haldenstein believes a client’s investments may have been affected, it will provide a fully customized report of our findings, together with a thorough legal analysis, so that a client and its portfolio manager can make informed decisions about their legal options. If the firm believes that a client’s investments have been compromised, it will recommend a plan for the client to recover any significant losses and protect its investments.

• When a client owns a security that is the subject of a newly filed state and federal class action or shareholder derivative action, we provide an analysis of the action and recommendations so that the client can make a fully informed decision about its litigation options.

Responsive Portfolio Monitoring and Investigation

Wolf Haldenstein also provides passive portfolio monitoring and investigation at the request of an institutional investor or family office client:

How it works:

• When a family office client believes that its investments may have been compromised and requests an investigation, Wolf Haldenstein conducts a comprehensive, customized review of any news, press releases, financial information, or stock market prices that many have impacted the client’s portfolio.

• Following Wolf Haldenstein’s investigation, the firm will prepare a fully customized report of our findings together with a thorough legal analysis so that the client requesting the investigation and its portfolio manager can make informed decisions about its investments and how best to recover its losses.

Securities and Shareholder Litigation

Wolf Haldenstein offers three kinds of securities and shareholder litigation services for family offices: representative litigation, opt-out litigation, and individual litigation. These services are usually provided to the client on a contingent fee basis with no financial obligation on the client unless the litigation is resolved in its favor.

Representative Litigation

When a securities class action or shareholder derivative action is commenced for any investment in a client’s portfolio, Wolf Haldenstein analyzes the client’s loss to determine whether it may be appropriate for the client to seek to become a lead plaintiff in the class action or become a representative plaintiff in the derivative action. The analysis includes the nature and size of the client’s loss as well as the reason(s) for the loss.

A plaintiff in a representative litigation protects not just its own interests, but also the interests of other investors (in a securities class action) or of the company (in a derivative action). Representative litigation is handled on a contingent fee basis, and our fees and reimbursement of expenses are subject to a court’s review and approval and paid from a common fund, rather than by the plaintiff.

Opt-Out Litigation

As its name implies, when a securities class action is commenced for a particular investment in a client’s portfolio, the client may wish to pursue its own individual claim rather than seek to take an active role as a representative plaintiff or merely a passive role as a class member.

The decision to request exclusion from (or “opt out” of) a class action to pursue individual litigation is dependent upon a variety of factors, including the size of the client’s loss, the reason(s) for the loss, and the nature and status of the pending class action.

A client may elect to opt out of the class action and pursue individual litigation while the action is being litigated or after a proposed settlement of the action has been reached.

• Opt-out litigation offers two potential advantages over participating in a class action. First, opt-out litigation often recovers a greater percentage of the individual client’s loss than may be achieved in a class action. Second, the attorneys’ fees and expenses for opt-out litigation are often proportionately smaller than the fees and expenses awarded in a class action. A client often achieves a greater net recovery through opt-out litigation than members of the class action achieve on the same claims.

Individual Litigation

In some circumstances, a family office or public or private management fund may be uniquely affected by adverse events that give rise to individual (rather than representative) litigation.

Wolf Haldenstein provides individual litigation services to clients on a case-by-case basis.  Such services may be offered on a contingent fee or hourly basis.