Jeroen van Kwawegen is a leading U.S. shareholder lawyer. Jeroen is co-head of BLB&G’s corporate governance practice, and oversees all breach of fiduciary duty litigation on behalf of shareholders against boards and senior executives. Jeroen also leads BLB&G’s work representing European institutional investors in shareholder litigation, including securities class actions.
Over the course of his career, Jeroen has recovered more than two billion dollars for investors, improved corporate governance practices at numerous companies, and vindicated fundamental shareholder voting and franchise rights. Jeroen first-chaired numerous trials and has been widely recognized for his accomplishments. Lawdragon named Jeroen one of “the 500 Leading Lawyers in America.” Legal 500 identified Jeroen as a “great trial lawyer” and Bernstein Litowitz a “Tier 1” firm for M&A Litigation Plaintiff work. Benchmark named Jeroen a “litigation star” and Law360 selected him as a “Legal MVP” in securities. The National Law Journal named Jeroen a “Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Trailblazer” and included him among the top 26 practitioners in the U.S. “who continue to make their mark in various aspects of legal work on the Plaintiffs’ side.”
Jeroen recently represented a public pension fund in a stockholder derivative action against the board of directors of FirstEnergy Corp. arising out of a massive political bribery scandal, resulting in a $180 million settlement and unprecedented corporate governance improvements, including replacing six directors and a process that led to the removal of the chief executive officer. Jeroen is currently also prosecuting a number of securities class actions, including cases against Meta Platforms, Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Propetro Holding Corp., Synchrony Financial Corp., and Qualcomm Inc.
Jeroen is a board member of Legal Services NYC—one of the largest legal aid organizations in the United States providing legal assistance to more than 100,000 New Yorkers every year, including immigrants, veterans, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Jeroen is a frequent speaker at bar association and industry events on shareholder litigation and corporate governance related topics and publishes often on topics of interest to institutional investors. Jeroen co-authored "Of Babies and Bathwater: Deterring Frivolous Stockholder Suits Without Closing the Courthouse Doors to Legitimate Claims" that was published in the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law (DJCL), Vol. 40, 2015.