San Antonio Fire & Police Pension Fund v. Syneos Health Inc., No. 21-2309 (4th Cir. 2023)
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This case arose when two companies merged in the biopharmaceutical market. Biopharmaceutical companies develop medicines from living cells. Those medicines must be tested and then approved by the Food and Drug Administration before they can be publicly marketed. The two companies here—INC Research Holdings, Inc. and inVentiv Health, Inc.—did not develop their own medicines, but helped other companies that did. Pre-merger, INC Research specialized in assisting biopharmaceutical companies conduct clinical trials as part of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process. Wanting to break into the approved-drugcommercialization market, INC Research sought to merge with inVentiv in 2017. Plaintiffs claim that they relied on allegedly misleading statements that INC Research and its executives made in three different communications: (1) the press release announcing the merger; (2) an earnings call held on May 10; and (3) an earnings call held on July 27. The district court dismissed Plaintiffs’ case for failure to state a claim.
The Fourth Circuit affirmed. The court explained that INC Research’s investors have a right to be disappointed that their company’s performance did not meet its optimistic projections. But that does not mean that they also have a right to civil remedies under federal securities law. Securities fraud liability cannot be “predicated solely on an overly optimistic view of a future which may, in fact, encounter harsh economic realities down the road.”
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