Expert Testimony / Litigation Support

    Experienced Legal Support

    Advanced Securities Consulting’s professionals have the technical expertise and extensive litigation support experience to assist parties involved in complex commercial litigation. Disputes involving extended and complicated transaction chains, securities lending, and repo are becoming more common. Litigants need experts like ASC who can make often esoteric financial concepts clear and understandable to laypersons, particularly jurors, judges, and boards of directors.

    ASC also assists regulators in investigations, enforcement actions, and enforcement litigation.

    Advanced Securities Consulting has provided expert witness testimony, analysis, and opinions in complex financial cases before courts and tribunals throughout the US.

    • 2020 – U.S. District Court, Southern District of NY
    • 2015 – US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
    • 2014 – Consultation for the Enforcement Division of the U.S. Department of Labor
    • 2014 – U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota
    • 2013 – Circuit Court of Cole County Missouri
    • 2012 – US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
    • 2012 – Twelfth Judicial Circuit for Sarasota County, Florida
    • 2012 – U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of NY
    • 2012 – US District Court for the District of Massachusetts
    • 2012 – US District Court for the District of Nebraska
    • 2012 – US District Court for the Middle District of Florida
    • 2011 – US District Court for the Central District of California, Southern Division
    • 2011 – US District Court for the Southern District of New York
    • 2010 – American Arbitration Association

    Class Action Litigation Support

    Class action litigation affecting financial firms often involves complex data, requiring the reconstruction of cash flows, billings, transactions, or lengthy and complex transaction chains. ASC provides the expertise necessary to piece together and reconstruct financial histories in a comprehensive, coherent format. ASC’s extensive data, research, and statistical expertise are also instrumental in assisting litigants to place values on hard-to-mark trades and businesses.

    Often, our analyses are integral to assisting lawyers to map out sound defense strategies, and the application of techniques used by ASC can be effective in ending class action suits in the summary judgment phase, well before the costs of protracted litigation are incurred.

    Testifying and Consulting Experts

    ASC’s principals have been testifying experts in numerous securities finance litigation matters, educating judges and juries on complex financial concepts, business practices and operations, and standards of care. Our experts have been retained as consulting esperts to assist in developing legal and discovery strategies, challenge opposing experts, reinforce the and coach testifying experts, and help advocates to determine how to best represent the facts of the case at trial. The opinions and analysis of our experts have been integral to the successful trial or favorable settlements for our clients. We are pleased to provide references upon request.

    ASC’s work in securities finance litigation is well known and recognized beyond our clients and even opposing counsel. Our founder, securities finance expert, Edmon W. Blount, co-authored the chapter, “Securities Finance Disputes (30.1)” in the definitive guide for financial experts engaged in litigation services. Weil, Roman L., et al. Litigation Services Handbook: The Role of the Financial Expert. VI ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2017.

    Cover of the Litigation Services Handbook, 6th Edition featuring Ed Blount - Advanced Securities Consulting.

    Sample Engagements

    Legal Defense Strategy

    ASC was engaged by counsel to help with strategic planning in defense of a clawback claim in arbitration. This dispute related to the divestiture of an overseas affiliate of a major financial institution with a global insurance/reinsurance business. During that engagement, ASC experts designed a holistic defense using both qualitative and quantitative metrics. ASC also recommended lines of inquiry for depositions and rebuttals for the opposition’s expert reports.

    Securities Lending & Collateral Management

    Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, many institutional investors experienced losses in their securities lending collateral pools. This has given rise to lawsuits all over the US and abroad looking back at lending agents’ collateral management decisions. Advanced Securities Consulting has assisted litigants and their counsel to examine investment management processes and decisions made in the context of the prevailing market environment of the time and the available market data. ASC’s conclusions in these cases are well supported by sound financial data analysis and application of statistical and other quantitative techniques.

    Alternative Investment Vehicles

    In a dispute involving a major player in the securities lending industry, Advanced Securities Consulting was retained to assess the overall conduct of the lending agent’s processes, controls, and risk management. This engagement examined the lending agent’s decisions to include alternative investment vehicles in their collateral pool investments for their clients, including a comprehensive assessment of the types and structures of these vehicles.

    Global Trading Strategies

    In a case involving the bankruptcy of a major global financial institution, ASC was called in to analyze over twenty-year-old fragmented trading data from a now archaic proprietary cross-border trading system. ASC designed and applied novel and creative approaches to the archival data sets to extract discrete transactions that were the subject of the lawsuit. Combining the reconstructed transaction data with contemporaneous market events, and careful and close examination of the testimony of witnesses, ASC was able to reconstruct the individual and highly complex arbitrage transactions spanning multiple borders. In doing so, ASC was able to help the client’s law firm demonstrate the company’s decades-long comprehensive global market strategy.