July 17 (Reuters) - Nasdaq OMX Group Inc and investors who
sued the exchange operator over Facebook Inc's $16 billion
initial public offering have asked a judicial panel to keep
their dispute separate from dozens of related shareholder
lawsuits.
The No. 1 social network and lead underwriters MorganStanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co had
filed a motion requesting that the various lawsuits over the IPO
be grouped together in federal court in Manhattan.
But in court papers filed on Monday before the U.S. Judicial
Panel on Multi-District Litigation, Nasdaq and investor
plaintiffs who sued it asked the panel not to combine their
cases with the shareholder lawsuits against Facebook.
Brant Bishop, a Kirkland & Ellis lawyer representing
Facebook, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
More than a dozen lawsuits by shareholders have accused
Facebook and its underwriters of hiding the company's weakened
growth forecasts ahead of the May 18 IPO, one of the largest in
U.S. history.
Nasdaq, meanwhile, was sued by investors who claimed it
caused losses by negligently handling their orders for Facebook
shares.
"When compared to the Nasdaq actions, the securities actions
allege different claims based on different facts against
different defendants on behalf of broader classes and are
subject to different and unique pretrial procedures," these
investors said in a filing Monday.
Nasdaq made a similar argument in a separate court filing,
while conceding that some coordination with the Facebook
shareholder actions was warranted.
U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet in Manhattan is overseeing
the litigation against Nasdaq.
Separately on Monday, two plaintiffs who sued Facebook asked
that their cases be heard in a federal court in California, and
not in New York.
It was not immediately clear when the judicial panel, which
meets in different cities in the United States, would address
how best to handle both sets of cases.
Facebook's IPO was to have been the culmination of years of
breakneck growth for a social network that became a cultural and
business phenomenon.
But shares in the eight-year-old company founded by Mark
Zuckerberg in his Harvard dormitory room have shed almost a
quarter of their value, or $24 billion, since going public at
$38 a share.
The case is In Re: Facebook Inc, IPO Securities and
Derivative Litigation, U.S. Judicial Panel on Multi-District
Litigation, No. 12-md-2389.
For Facebook: Brant Bishop of Kirkland & Ellis.
For Nasdaq: William Slaughter of Ballard Spahr.
For Nasdaq plaintiffs: Douglas Thompson of Finkelstein
Thompson.
(Reporting by Basil Katz)
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