While the total number of federal securities class actions was down year-over-year in 2020, the percentage of total cases targeting issuers based outside the U.S. jumped from 15% in 2019 to just over 27% last year. A group of securities litigators from Dechert recently crunched the numbers of the case filings, did some analysis of the underlying allegations and dug into the dispositive decisions issued involving non-U.S. issuers over the past year. You can download a copy of their report for yourself here.

Late last week we caught up with partner Angela Liu to discuss the Dechert team's findings. She pointed out that companies headquartered in China were the most frequent targets based outside the U.S. The 28 Chinese companies hit with securities class actions in the U.S. was more than double the next highest, with Canadian companies being hit with 12 such suits. Liu also pointed out that the market capitalizations of the target companies were all over the map, with nearly as many small cap non-U.S. companies valued at $250 million or less (14) targeted as those valued in the tens of billions (15).