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CCB In The News
| By: CARL ROTENBERG, Times
Herald Staff |
May 21, 2003 |
 Staking
claims: CCBI gets money for customers
WHITPAIN
- A class action recovery firm is using its company Web site and a
detailed database to help clients file claims on a $387.5 million
restitution fund set up by federal securities regulators earlier this
month. Claims Compensation
Bureau Inc. has already signed up 20 clients to use the bureau's claim
services for the fund, said Brad E. Heffler, the CEO and owner of CCBI.
The
Web site, www.claimscompensation.com, lists the 143 stocks involved in
the restitution fund and the class periods for each of the brokerage
firms named in the settlement. The federal regulators
charged that from mid-1999 to mid-2001, the investment banking sides
of 10 investment firms maintained an inappropriate influence over
research analysts and their reports.
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The
rules for the restitution fund are expected to be announced this
summer. The bureau files appropriate class action lawsuits or claims
for investment companies and individuals. It charges a 25-percent fee
for any money that is recovered, but does not charge for litigation
expenses. "The average stockholder throws out the notices of
class action lawsuits," said Heffler. Heffler said many
investment firms don't pursue monetary claims because they have had a
bad experience in the past.
Heffler started his company in 1996 from his Lafayette Hill home with
a $10,000 investment for mailing lists and office equipment. For the
first two years, he prospected for clients and built a database of 150
class action settlements made between 1994 and 1996. That database
attracted his first client, Tague Securities of Philadelphia, in 1998.
Heffler moved to a Whitpain office that year and hired three workers
to file claims and generate new sales. Gross sales were $96,474 in
1998 from 10 client companies, according to Heffler.
Last year, he said, gross sales grew to $2 million from 50 client
companies. The client list includes the Royal Bank of Canada; and
Market Street Securities, PTR Inc. and Penn Options company, all of
Philadelphia.
When Nasdaq settled a $1 billion case in 2000, the Whitpain company
recovered more than $40 million for several hundred clients. Revenues
jumped to $10.3 million that year, making the bureau the
fastest-growing privately held company in the Philadelphia region in
2000. "We got 500 individual stock traders from that one
case," Heffler said. "We recovered over $40 million for
those clients." He is most proud that he recovered more than
$100,000 for a widow from West Orange, N.J., and more than $1 million
each for five individual investors.
Heffler grew up in Lower Merion and earned a business administration
degree at George Washington University in 1981. He joined his family's
CPA firm, Heffler & Company of Philadelphia, and served as a
senior accountant from 1981 to 1986. He became a partner in 1987 and
left in 1996 to start Claims Compensation Bureau.
At Heffler & Company, he supervised the CPA firm's decisions on
paying out business interruption claims from a $25 million fund
established after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in central
Pennsylvania.
While he was supervising the distribution of compensation claims, he
realized investor settlements could create a service business.
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| ŠThe
Times Herald 2003 |
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