Savient Wins On Scienter

Savient Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SVNT) today announced that securities class action pending against the company and three of its former officers was dismissed with prejudice.

The case is pending in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey before Senior Judge Harold A. Ackerman.

During the class period Savient was known as Bio-Technology General Corporation, but changed its name on June 23, 2003. The litigation is thus captioned as In re Bio-Technology General Corp. Sec. Litig.

Poalim Mutual Funds and Joseph Rago are the lead plaintiffs and Glancy Binkow & Goldberg LLP and the Law Offices of Jacob Sabo are lead counsel in the Bio-Technology General litigation. A copy of Judge Ackerman's opinion appointing lead plaintiffs and lead counsel can be found here.

The lead plaintiffs filed a first amended consolidated class action complaint on September 25, 2003, and by this opinion, Judge Ackerman dismissed the complaint without prejudice.

On October 11, 2005 the plaintiffs filed this second amended complaint (complete with attachments from a "confidential witness") and the defendants again moved to dismiss.

According to the press release, Judge Ackerman's dismissal of the second complaint was based on the failure:

to set forth particularized facts, through direct or circumstantial evidence, which give rise to a strong inference that the defendants acted with intent to defraud, recklessness or a conscious disregard of the truth.

In other words - insufficient scienter allegations.

Daily Trivia: Poalim Mutual Funds was one of the two mutual fund managers of Bank Hapoalim Ltd., Israel's largest bank. In late 2005, Hapoalim and the second largest mutual fund manager in Israel, Bank Leumi Le-Israel Ltd., began selling their mutual and provident fund-management units to comply with a new law that required Israeli banks to divest their asset-management businesses.