Williams & Connolly LLP has wide-ranging experience in securities litigation, corporate directors' and officers' liability litigation, derivative actions, SEC enforcement proceedings and financial services litigation. The firm currently represents the auditors of HealthSouth in putative criminal and civil class action cases alleging securities fraud and overstatement of earnings. Former top executives of a prominent energy company and of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac retained Williams & Connolly lawyers to represent them in class action and other lawsuits concerning financial reporting and business practices.

Williams & Connolly lawyers successfully argued that the statute of limitations barred a shareholder class action suit alleging options backdating against the co-founder of a global communications company, which resulted in dismissal of all claims. The firm successfully defended one of the law firms that represented Enron in a series of consolidated class actions alleging that the law firm assisted Enron in committing violations of the securities laws. After four years of intense litigation, the plaintiffs dropped their claims against the law firm with no settlement payment. Recently, the firm successfully upheld a dismissal on appeal to the Second Circuit of an exempt transaction under the securities rule on short-swing profits, on behalf of a private equity fund, and obtained summary judgment for a major internet company in another short-swing trading case.  For Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group, one of the top 10 investment banks in the nation, Williams & Connolly lawyers obtained dismissal of multiple securities cases in the Southern District of New York.  The firm also recently obtained dismissal on all counts of a securities class action claim against a top executive of BearingPoint. Williams & Connolly lawyers have also successfully defeated a number of shareholder derivative suits, including one against a major internet search engine on the ground that the shareholder failed to make pre-suit demand on the board of directors. In other securities actions, the firm has represented UBS, a prominent industrial waste management company, an electric company, Australia's largest telecommunications company, and an apparel company, among many others.