As already announced in December 2009, Deminor launches today a procedure against Fortis SA/NV for having violated its obligations as a listed company with respect to the information it has to communicate to the public. The purpose of this procedure, which is launched before the Court of commerce of Brussels, is to claim damages for the investors who have hired Deminor.
Deminor believes that, in particular since the announcement of the launch of the takeover of ABN Amro up until the dismantling of the group in the autumn 2008, Fortis' communication was misleading on several material aspects, including on its subprime exposure, its dividend policy, its liquidity, its solvency and the consequences of the acquisition of ABN Amro. During this period of time, investors decided to buy and/or hold Fortis shares based on misleading information from Fortis.
For instance, while launching its capital increase in September 2007 in order to raise more than 13 billion euro in the market (the largest share issue that ever took place in Belgium), Fortis convinced numerous shareholders and investors to subscribe to the new shares by disclosing misleading information in the prospectus.
For these persons, losses materialized in the significant fall of the share price during this period of time which largely exceeded the overall downturn on stock markets in general and the fall of the bank index in particular.
The procedure was launched today on behalf of more than 2600 plaintiffs. Other parties will join the procedure in the coming weeks.
The damages claimed for the Deminor clients will depend on criteria such as the number of shares purchased and/or held during the aforementioned period of time. At this stage, Deminor estimates that those damages amount to at least 4 euro per share, or even more depending on the date of purchase/subscription among other criteria.
In this procedure, Deminor and its clients are advised by Ms Catherine Houssa and Mr Cédric Guyot from the law firm CMS DeBacker in Brussels.
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Person of contact :
Charles Demoulin
Tel +32-2-674-71-10
