November 30, 2004

Shareholder actions are mushrooming in Germany and many other countries as a result of recent financial scandals, and various nations including the Netherlands and Finland have enacted or are enacting laws allowing class action or other aggregation methods to handle the resulting litigation more efficiently, according to a Bloomberg News report spotted by Lyle Roberts of the 10b-5 Daily. The article includes the following quote: "'Europe wasn't litigious until about five years ago, but then we started to get Americanized,' says Paul Bowden, a 49-year-old partner at the law firm of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London. 'Consumer associations have become more powerful and willing to push lawsuits, and there is a growing number of small law firms with young, ambitious lawyers who have learned a lot from the U.S.'"