The number of securities class actions settled reached a 10-year high in 2021, but the value of those settlements lagged recent years’, a new report from Cornerstone Research has found.

Much of the reason for the greater number of settlements, researchers said, can be attributed to the record-high number of case filings between 2017 and 2019, the time period in which the majority of the settled cases were initially filed, while the year-over-year decrease in median settlement amounts can be attributed to lower estimates of shareholder losses and the presence of fewer factors that typically drive up settlement numbers.