They must have seen it coming at Belmont, but the breed of American investor that believes it has a divine right to make money on all its investments has struck again – this time, no fewer than a dozen nuisance shareholder lawsuits have been launched against Oracle Systems Corp over the fact that it failed to signal ahead of time the fact that fiscal third quarter figures would be disappointing: Oracle reckons that the suits are without merit, but as the US rules on material disclosure stand, such cases have to be taken seriously; one absurdity of the situation is that the shares would almost certainly have fallen just as far just as quickly if the company had spotted its error sooner and issued a warning, but there would have been no grounds for bringing any lawsuit.
