Reconciling fiduciary duty with global litigation risk
10 Dec 2025
WTax Class Action’s Iain Kedzlie, chief commercial officer, and Madonna-Leigh Hendry, chief operating officer and head of litigation, sit down with Asset Servicing Times to discuss how asset servicers can balance fiduciary obligations with rising global litigation risks
Image: WTax Class Action
Given the consensus that recovering funds from securities class actions is a core fiduciary duty, what barriers still prevent institutional investors from filing every eligible claim, and how can asset servicers help mitigate the risk of being perceived as overly litigious?
Despite broad recognition that pursuing securities class action (SCA) recoveries aligns with fiduciary duties and obligations to maximise returns for beneficiaries, we still see investors hesitant to participate as a result of operational or other misconceptions. Operationally, the growing volume of cases and the complexity of global legal frameworks make it challenging to identify and track every potential recovery opportunity internally.
There is also the complexity of data aggregation and analysis, tracking holdings across custodians, calculating eligible losses under varying jurisdictional rules, and navigating tight filing deadlines. Many institutions lack integrated systems for real-time portfolio reconciliation, leading to missed claims and recoveries. Shareholders also express a fear of reputational damage and are often concerned that aggressive claim filing signals adversarial behaviour toward issuers, potentially straining relationships with portfolio companies and damaging their long-term value.
However, this concern is often based on outdated assumptions about the market impact of investor litigation. In practice, securities class actions rarely harm the long-term value of an issuer. Settlements are typically funded through a mix of insurance and other mechanisms, and by the time a resolution is reached, the associated risk is already priced into the security. In fact, resolving a dispute frequently removes uncertainty and restores confidence.
The recent AMP super fees class action (Australia) illustrates this dynamic clearly. When the matter settled for AU$120 million (US$78.6 million) in September 2025, AMP’s share price rose approximately six per cent on the news.
Markets often reward companies for addressing wrongdoing, strengthening governance, and clearing contingent liabilities from their balance sheets.
From a fiduciary perspective, private enforcement enhances confidence in the integrity of the market.
If investors are truly concerned about the long-term health of their investments, then ensuring that issuers uphold strong disclosure standards and behave responsibly is essential.
Participation in class actions supports this ecosystem by reinforcing accountability, strengthens governance incentives, and ensuring that capital flows to businesses whose conduct merits investor trust.
WTax’s role is to help clients navigate this terrain discreetly and responsibly. By quietly managing eligibility assessments, filings, and documentation, we allow investors to fulfil their fiduciary obligations without drawing unwanted attention or creating the perception of pursuing litigation for its own sake.
This combination of operational support and reputational sensitivity helps asset managers demonstrate both diligence and good governance, while ensuring that no eligible recovery is overlooked.
The market is witnessing a surge in litigation stemming from non-traditional disclosures. What type of allegations do you foresee becoming the dominant drivers of class action value in the next 12–18 months?
There were 114 securities class action filings in the first half of 2025 alone, driven largely by the tech sector. AI-related cases accounted for 12 of the 114 filings, putting us on track for over 25 annual AI cases in 2025, marking a sharp increase from the 2024 total of 15. With incredibly high value at stake, plaintiffs are focusing on ‘AI washing’, which is the term being used in the market to describe exaggerated claims about AI capabilities, revenue attribution, hidden costs, or technical limitations, often triggered by short-seller reports. ESG greenwashing is still prevalent, with over 2,700 global ESG suits filed as of early 2025, including US securities cases on misleading climate risks or green credentials. Overall, AI’s explosive growth in recent years, fuelled by regulatory scrutiny such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) AI Action Plan, will likely overtake some of the other forms of allegations in actual financial impact for institutions holding concentrated tech positions.
Looking ahead, investors can expect AI suits to surge further. We believe institutional investors could see 20–30 per cent of their class action recoveries tied to AI by 2027, if we remain on the current trajectory.
The global litigation environment is increasingly complex, especially following Morrison v National Australia Bank, with non-US jurisdictions gaining prominence. What are the most significant legal and operational hurdles for institutional investors when pursuing recoveries across these fragmented global markets?
Post the limitations on access to US courts brought on by the Morrison case, we have seen a surge (approximately 150 per cent) in non-US markets since 2020. These markets include Australia, the UK, and some parts of Europe, most notably, the Netherlands. However, given these cases span investors globally, institutions face a number of hurdles in accessing these cases.
Institutional investors must now navigate an expanding scope of non-US jurisdictions, each with its own procedures, standards of proof, and unique interpretations of investor rights. The most significant challenges include jurisdictional ambiguity, inconsistent loss-calculation methodologies, and intricate documentation requirements in opt-in regimes such as Australia, the UK, and parts of Europe.
One of the most challenging issues is jurisdictional risk, more specifically, determining which courts have standing to hear a claim, which transactions qualify, and whether the investor’s trading history aligns with the specific requirements of that specific jurisdiction. Many non-US systems apply narrow definitions of eligible securities, the place of execution, or even nuances in settlement mechanics. Mapping a global trading footprint across these variables is far from straightforward, particularly for managers trading the same security across multiple exchanges.
An added layer of complexity arises from reliance requirements, which vary widely across jurisdictions. While US cases generally apply the ‘fraud-on-the-market’ presumption, many emerging and civil law markets require more explicit demonstrations of reliance. Some courts expect investors to prove that their purchase decisions were influenced by specific company disclosures or that they assessed information that was later shown to be misleading. Being able to prove reliance can be particularly difficult without specialist support; many institutional investors unintentionally exclude themselves from viable claims simply because they cannot efficiently produce the necessary documentation or narrative to satisfy these burdens.
These hurdles extend beyond legal uncertainty. Operationally, aligning global trading records to the correct jurisdiction or procedural pathway can be extraordinarily demanding, particularly for multi-strategy managers or investors trading across primary and secondary exchanges. WTax addresses these challenges through jurisdiction-specific expertise, deep local legal partnerships, and technology built to map global trade data reliably to the appropriate legal framework. This ensures clients can pursue recoveries confidently, even in markets they may have previously avoided.
Beyond the direct loss of settlement funds, what are the frequently overlooked or hidden costs for fund managers who attempt to manage their SCA recovery process entirely in-house? At what threshold does managing SCA recovery internally become a quantifiable risk to operational efficiency and compliance?
Many fund managers underestimate the hidden costs of managing securities class action recovery internally. The operational day-to-day work goes far beyond simply filing forms; it involves constant monitoring of global litigation, interpreting complex legal notices, validating and normalising data from multiple custodians, and managing ongoing dialogue with claims administrators. These demands can divert operational teams from core investment-related responsibilities and expose firms to the risk of missed deadlines, rejected claims, or incomplete filings.
In practice, internal management becomes a quantifiable operational risk once a firm’s AUM surpasses several billion dollars, when daily trading volumes increase materially, or when the portfolio expands across more than a handful of non-US markets. At that scale, the combination of global exposure, data complexity, and regulatory expectations often exceeds what an internal team can sustainably handle, especially without the tech capabilities required to handle this at scale. WTax alleviates this pressure by providing a fully managed process that ensures accuracy, consistency, and compliance across all jurisdictions, with our technology at the forefront of managing these operational hurdles.
What are the key data and documentation challenges facing asset servicers today in proving reliance and calculating eligible losses?
As mentioned previously, proving reliance is a daunting task. Firstly, documents rarely provide clear-cut evidence that an investor purchased the security as a result of a specific representation later shown to be misleading. Investment decisions are typically multifactorial and supported by a blend of quantitative models, qualitative assessments, macroeconomic views, and internal policy constraints. As a result, proving reliance through documentation becomes inherently complex.
Second, the documents themselves often reflect different levels of granular detail and any gaps not covered allow defendants to argue that any apparent link between the misstatement and the investment decision is too weak to satisfy legal causation.
When it comes to data challenges, we often see incomplete, inconsistent data, or data files subject to changes in format over time. Institutional investors frequently undergo platform migrations, regulatory restructuring, or adviser turnover, leading to fragmented audit trails. Even where the underlying trades are clear, the rationale for them may have been recorded in a separate compliance system or not retained at all. For global investors, these record-keeping inconsistencies compound issues in proving reliance across jurisdictions.
These evidentiary and data gaps do not only hinder the ability to show reliance, they also directly complicate the calculation of recoverable loss. Accurate loss modelling depends on reconstructing what an investor bought, when, at what price, and why. When the underlying documentary record is inconsistent, that reconstruction becomes substantially more complex.
How will recent or proposed regulatory shifts — including the SEC’s enhanced scrutiny on areas like non-GAAP measures or new global corporate governance standards — likely reshape the SCA recovery environment over the coming five years?
We foresee that regulatory reforms will significantly increase both the frequency and value of recoveries for institutional investors. Globally, new governance and sustainability standards in Europe and Asia are also creating greater accountability around disclosure quality. As regulators coordinate more closely across borders, misconduct is likely to be identified faster, investigated more thoroughly, and translated into more investor-friendly redress mechanisms. This regulatory momentum will broaden the geographic scope of viable claims, increase the proportion of high-value cases arising outside the US, and heighten the importance of a truly global recovery strategy.
Given the need for anonymity, what specific procedural safeguards and technological controls does WTax employ to minimise public exposure while still meeting the stringent transparency requirements of various court systems?
WTax employs comprehensive procedural and technological measures to reduce any public exposure while still complying fully with global court systems. Procedurally, we structure participation through local counsel, utilise anonymisation mechanisms when sharing data with local counsel, and carefully manage filing structures to avoid unnecessary disclosure of client identities.
We also offer clients an opportunity to set parameters around what type of cases we enter them into, based on associated risks and criteria that meet a client’s internal policies. Technologically, we arm our systems architecture with strict access controls, encrypted data pathways, and automated redaction of sensitive information. These combined safeguards allow clients to participate confidently, discreetly, and in full compliance with court requirements.
Beyond simply handling the administrative burden of filing, where does WTax generate the most significant incremental value and recovery for a client who already manages a basic claim filing process in-house?
For clients who already handle basic filing tasks internally, WTax delivers incremental value in several areas that materially affect recovery outcomes. Our global, automated monitoring tool, Atlas, identifies cases that internal teams typically miss, and we leverage our strong relationships with leading global law firms in the market specialising in plaintiff litigation, who keep us fully abreast of the opt in cases as they progress through the litigious process. Our enhanced, automated loss calculation models maximise recoveries by ensuring there are no inaccuracies in loss calculation, ensuring favourable outcomes for investors. Additionally, our ability to resolve documentation deficiencies swiftly significantly improves acceptance rates, especially in more complex cases.
Perhaps most importantly, we provide a comprehensive, fully transparent audit trail and compliance framework that reduces internal workload for our clients. Many clients find that partnering with WTax leads to recoveries several times larger than what they achieved through in-house processes alone.
Can you share a high-level example of a recent case where WTax’s specific knowledge of a non-US jurisdiction allowed a client to successfully pursue a recovery that a less specialised or US-centric claims provider would have likely missed?
WTax assisted our client with their registration into the Mayne Pharma Class Action, which was litigated out of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia, and was the subject of a court ordered opt out and registration process.
Having managed the entire process for our client, from case identification, data collection from the client’s custodian bank and subsequent eligibility analysis, as well as leveraging our relationship with the lead counsel in the case, Phi Finney McDonald, to have our client’s losses registered in this case, we successfully secured an award of AU$6.4 million of the total settlement which was approved by the court in the amount of AU$38 million. This was a significant award for our client, and WTax was extremely pleased with the outcome for the client, following complex data gap corrections and back and forth communication with the law firm to ensure a successful outcome for our client.
A US-centric claims provider could easily have overlooked the Mayne Pharma opportunity because the action was not litigated in the US, but in the Supreme Court of Victoria in Australia, despite the underlying allegations relating to anti-competitive conduct in the US pharmaceutical market. This structure sits well outside the patterns that US-focused monitoring systems are built to detect. Many US-centric providers track only US federal filings and settlement notices, meaning an Australian shareholder class action grounded in US behavioural allegations would unlikely appear in their workflow.
Just as critically, the eligibility framework in Australia differs significantly from the US class action procedure. The Mayne Pharma matter proceeded as an open-class, opt-out action, subject to a registration process where eligible investors were required to meet Australian procedural standards, provide Australian-form ownership proofs, and submit trading data consistent with the Victorian Supreme Court’s methodology. A provider anchored in US markets, where filings are often automated, documentation requirements are uniform, and loss methods align with US federal securities law, may have incorrectly dismissed the case as non-actionable because the alleged misconduct took place in the US and did not involve purchases on a US exchange.
Additionally, the case relied on Australia’s unique class action architecture, including continuous disclosure obligations and misleading or deceptive conduct provisions, which do not map neatly onto US reliance doctrines or Morrison-style territorial rules. A US-centric provider may have assumed that an investor trading Mayne Pharma on the Australia Securities Exchange (ASX) would be excluded from a claim tied to US anti-competitive behaviour, when in fact the Australian legal pathway expressly enabled those shareholders to recover. Misapplying US territorial logic in a non-US jurisdiction is one of the most common reasons these cases are missed.
WTax, by contrast, identified the matter early because our systems monitor non-US courts, funder announcements, plaintiff filings, and regional litigation trends, not just US dockets. Our team analysed the Australian procedural landscape, validated client eligibility under local rules, and handled the substantial documentation requirements that would fall outside the capabilities of a US-centric provider.
As a result, clients secured a recovery that would almost certainly have gone unrealised with a provider whose expertise and visibility were confined to US markets.
Despite broad recognition that pursuing securities class action (SCA) recoveries aligns with fiduciary duties and obligations to maximise returns for beneficiaries, we still see investors hesitant to participate as a result of operational or other misconceptions. Operationally, the growing volume of cases and the complexity of global legal frameworks make it challenging to identify and track every potential recovery opportunity internally.
There is also the complexity of data aggregation and analysis, tracking holdings across custodians, calculating eligible losses under varying jurisdictional rules, and navigating tight filing deadlines. Many institutions lack integrated systems for real-time portfolio reconciliation, leading to missed claims and recoveries. Shareholders also express a fear of reputational damage and are often concerned that aggressive claim filing signals adversarial behaviour toward issuers, potentially straining relationships with portfolio companies and damaging their long-term value.
However, this concern is often based on outdated assumptions about the market impact of investor litigation. In practice, securities class actions rarely harm the long-term value of an issuer. Settlements are typically funded through a mix of insurance and other mechanisms, and by the time a resolution is reached, the associated risk is already priced into the security. In fact, resolving a dispute frequently removes uncertainty and restores confidence.
The recent AMP super fees class action (Australia) illustrates this dynamic clearly. When the matter settled for AU$120 million (US$78.6 million) in September 2025, AMP’s share price rose approximately six per cent on the news.
Markets often reward companies for addressing wrongdoing, strengthening governance, and clearing contingent liabilities from their balance sheets.
From a fiduciary perspective, private enforcement enhances confidence in the integrity of the market.
If investors are truly concerned about the long-term health of their investments, then ensuring that issuers uphold strong disclosure standards and behave responsibly is essential.
Participation in class actions supports this ecosystem by reinforcing accountability, strengthens governance incentives, and ensuring that capital flows to businesses whose conduct merits investor trust.
WTax’s role is to help clients navigate this terrain discreetly and responsibly. By quietly managing eligibility assessments, filings, and documentation, we allow investors to fulfil their fiduciary obligations without drawing unwanted attention or creating the perception of pursuing litigation for its own sake.
This combination of operational support and reputational sensitivity helps asset managers demonstrate both diligence and good governance, while ensuring that no eligible recovery is overlooked.
The market is witnessing a surge in litigation stemming from non-traditional disclosures. What type of allegations do you foresee becoming the dominant drivers of class action value in the next 12–18 months?
There were 114 securities class action filings in the first half of 2025 alone, driven largely by the tech sector. AI-related cases accounted for 12 of the 114 filings, putting us on track for over 25 annual AI cases in 2025, marking a sharp increase from the 2024 total of 15. With incredibly high value at stake, plaintiffs are focusing on ‘AI washing’, which is the term being used in the market to describe exaggerated claims about AI capabilities, revenue attribution, hidden costs, or technical limitations, often triggered by short-seller reports. ESG greenwashing is still prevalent, with over 2,700 global ESG suits filed as of early 2025, including US securities cases on misleading climate risks or green credentials. Overall, AI’s explosive growth in recent years, fuelled by regulatory scrutiny such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) AI Action Plan, will likely overtake some of the other forms of allegations in actual financial impact for institutions holding concentrated tech positions.
Looking ahead, investors can expect AI suits to surge further. We believe institutional investors could see 20–30 per cent of their class action recoveries tied to AI by 2027, if we remain on the current trajectory.
The global litigation environment is increasingly complex, especially following Morrison v National Australia Bank, with non-US jurisdictions gaining prominence. What are the most significant legal and operational hurdles for institutional investors when pursuing recoveries across these fragmented global markets?
Post the limitations on access to US courts brought on by the Morrison case, we have seen a surge (approximately 150 per cent) in non-US markets since 2020. These markets include Australia, the UK, and some parts of Europe, most notably, the Netherlands. However, given these cases span investors globally, institutions face a number of hurdles in accessing these cases.
Institutional investors must now navigate an expanding scope of non-US jurisdictions, each with its own procedures, standards of proof, and unique interpretations of investor rights. The most significant challenges include jurisdictional ambiguity, inconsistent loss-calculation methodologies, and intricate documentation requirements in opt-in regimes such as Australia, the UK, and parts of Europe.
One of the most challenging issues is jurisdictional risk, more specifically, determining which courts have standing to hear a claim, which transactions qualify, and whether the investor’s trading history aligns with the specific requirements of that specific jurisdiction. Many non-US systems apply narrow definitions of eligible securities, the place of execution, or even nuances in settlement mechanics. Mapping a global trading footprint across these variables is far from straightforward, particularly for managers trading the same security across multiple exchanges.
An added layer of complexity arises from reliance requirements, which vary widely across jurisdictions. While US cases generally apply the ‘fraud-on-the-market’ presumption, many emerging and civil law markets require more explicit demonstrations of reliance. Some courts expect investors to prove that their purchase decisions were influenced by specific company disclosures or that they assessed information that was later shown to be misleading. Being able to prove reliance can be particularly difficult without specialist support; many institutional investors unintentionally exclude themselves from viable claims simply because they cannot efficiently produce the necessary documentation or narrative to satisfy these burdens.
These hurdles extend beyond legal uncertainty. Operationally, aligning global trading records to the correct jurisdiction or procedural pathway can be extraordinarily demanding, particularly for multi-strategy managers or investors trading across primary and secondary exchanges. WTax addresses these challenges through jurisdiction-specific expertise, deep local legal partnerships, and technology built to map global trade data reliably to the appropriate legal framework. This ensures clients can pursue recoveries confidently, even in markets they may have previously avoided.
Beyond the direct loss of settlement funds, what are the frequently overlooked or hidden costs for fund managers who attempt to manage their SCA recovery process entirely in-house? At what threshold does managing SCA recovery internally become a quantifiable risk to operational efficiency and compliance?
Many fund managers underestimate the hidden costs of managing securities class action recovery internally. The operational day-to-day work goes far beyond simply filing forms; it involves constant monitoring of global litigation, interpreting complex legal notices, validating and normalising data from multiple custodians, and managing ongoing dialogue with claims administrators. These demands can divert operational teams from core investment-related responsibilities and expose firms to the risk of missed deadlines, rejected claims, or incomplete filings.
In practice, internal management becomes a quantifiable operational risk once a firm’s AUM surpasses several billion dollars, when daily trading volumes increase materially, or when the portfolio expands across more than a handful of non-US markets. At that scale, the combination of global exposure, data complexity, and regulatory expectations often exceeds what an internal team can sustainably handle, especially without the tech capabilities required to handle this at scale. WTax alleviates this pressure by providing a fully managed process that ensures accuracy, consistency, and compliance across all jurisdictions, with our technology at the forefront of managing these operational hurdles.
What are the key data and documentation challenges facing asset servicers today in proving reliance and calculating eligible losses?
As mentioned previously, proving reliance is a daunting task. Firstly, documents rarely provide clear-cut evidence that an investor purchased the security as a result of a specific representation later shown to be misleading. Investment decisions are typically multifactorial and supported by a blend of quantitative models, qualitative assessments, macroeconomic views, and internal policy constraints. As a result, proving reliance through documentation becomes inherently complex.
Second, the documents themselves often reflect different levels of granular detail and any gaps not covered allow defendants to argue that any apparent link between the misstatement and the investment decision is too weak to satisfy legal causation.
When it comes to data challenges, we often see incomplete, inconsistent data, or data files subject to changes in format over time. Institutional investors frequently undergo platform migrations, regulatory restructuring, or adviser turnover, leading to fragmented audit trails. Even where the underlying trades are clear, the rationale for them may have been recorded in a separate compliance system or not retained at all. For global investors, these record-keeping inconsistencies compound issues in proving reliance across jurisdictions.
These evidentiary and data gaps do not only hinder the ability to show reliance, they also directly complicate the calculation of recoverable loss. Accurate loss modelling depends on reconstructing what an investor bought, when, at what price, and why. When the underlying documentary record is inconsistent, that reconstruction becomes substantially more complex.
How will recent or proposed regulatory shifts — including the SEC’s enhanced scrutiny on areas like non-GAAP measures or new global corporate governance standards — likely reshape the SCA recovery environment over the coming five years?
We foresee that regulatory reforms will significantly increase both the frequency and value of recoveries for institutional investors. Globally, new governance and sustainability standards in Europe and Asia are also creating greater accountability around disclosure quality. As regulators coordinate more closely across borders, misconduct is likely to be identified faster, investigated more thoroughly, and translated into more investor-friendly redress mechanisms. This regulatory momentum will broaden the geographic scope of viable claims, increase the proportion of high-value cases arising outside the US, and heighten the importance of a truly global recovery strategy.
Given the need for anonymity, what specific procedural safeguards and technological controls does WTax employ to minimise public exposure while still meeting the stringent transparency requirements of various court systems?
WTax employs comprehensive procedural and technological measures to reduce any public exposure while still complying fully with global court systems. Procedurally, we structure participation through local counsel, utilise anonymisation mechanisms when sharing data with local counsel, and carefully manage filing structures to avoid unnecessary disclosure of client identities.
We also offer clients an opportunity to set parameters around what type of cases we enter them into, based on associated risks and criteria that meet a client’s internal policies. Technologically, we arm our systems architecture with strict access controls, encrypted data pathways, and automated redaction of sensitive information. These combined safeguards allow clients to participate confidently, discreetly, and in full compliance with court requirements.
Beyond simply handling the administrative burden of filing, where does WTax generate the most significant incremental value and recovery for a client who already manages a basic claim filing process in-house?
For clients who already handle basic filing tasks internally, WTax delivers incremental value in several areas that materially affect recovery outcomes. Our global, automated monitoring tool, Atlas, identifies cases that internal teams typically miss, and we leverage our strong relationships with leading global law firms in the market specialising in plaintiff litigation, who keep us fully abreast of the opt in cases as they progress through the litigious process. Our enhanced, automated loss calculation models maximise recoveries by ensuring there are no inaccuracies in loss calculation, ensuring favourable outcomes for investors. Additionally, our ability to resolve documentation deficiencies swiftly significantly improves acceptance rates, especially in more complex cases.
Perhaps most importantly, we provide a comprehensive, fully transparent audit trail and compliance framework that reduces internal workload for our clients. Many clients find that partnering with WTax leads to recoveries several times larger than what they achieved through in-house processes alone.
Can you share a high-level example of a recent case where WTax’s specific knowledge of a non-US jurisdiction allowed a client to successfully pursue a recovery that a less specialised or US-centric claims provider would have likely missed?
WTax assisted our client with their registration into the Mayne Pharma Class Action, which was litigated out of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia, and was the subject of a court ordered opt out and registration process.
Having managed the entire process for our client, from case identification, data collection from the client’s custodian bank and subsequent eligibility analysis, as well as leveraging our relationship with the lead counsel in the case, Phi Finney McDonald, to have our client’s losses registered in this case, we successfully secured an award of AU$6.4 million of the total settlement which was approved by the court in the amount of AU$38 million. This was a significant award for our client, and WTax was extremely pleased with the outcome for the client, following complex data gap corrections and back and forth communication with the law firm to ensure a successful outcome for our client.
A US-centric claims provider could easily have overlooked the Mayne Pharma opportunity because the action was not litigated in the US, but in the Supreme Court of Victoria in Australia, despite the underlying allegations relating to anti-competitive conduct in the US pharmaceutical market. This structure sits well outside the patterns that US-focused monitoring systems are built to detect. Many US-centric providers track only US federal filings and settlement notices, meaning an Australian shareholder class action grounded in US behavioural allegations would unlikely appear in their workflow.
Just as critically, the eligibility framework in Australia differs significantly from the US class action procedure. The Mayne Pharma matter proceeded as an open-class, opt-out action, subject to a registration process where eligible investors were required to meet Australian procedural standards, provide Australian-form ownership proofs, and submit trading data consistent with the Victorian Supreme Court’s methodology. A provider anchored in US markets, where filings are often automated, documentation requirements are uniform, and loss methods align with US federal securities law, may have incorrectly dismissed the case as non-actionable because the alleged misconduct took place in the US and did not involve purchases on a US exchange.
Additionally, the case relied on Australia’s unique class action architecture, including continuous disclosure obligations and misleading or deceptive conduct provisions, which do not map neatly onto US reliance doctrines or Morrison-style territorial rules. A US-centric provider may have assumed that an investor trading Mayne Pharma on the Australia Securities Exchange (ASX) would be excluded from a claim tied to US anti-competitive behaviour, when in fact the Australian legal pathway expressly enabled those shareholders to recover. Misapplying US territorial logic in a non-US jurisdiction is one of the most common reasons these cases are missed.
WTax, by contrast, identified the matter early because our systems monitor non-US courts, funder announcements, plaintiff filings, and regional litigation trends, not just US dockets. Our team analysed the Australian procedural landscape, validated client eligibility under local rules, and handled the substantial documentation requirements that would fall outside the capabilities of a US-centric provider.
As a result, clients secured a recovery that would almost certainly have gone unrealised with a provider whose expertise and visibility were confined to US markets.
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