The growing trend of foreign investors’ involvement in U.S. securities class-action lawsuits remains alive and well, according to statistics tracked by RiskMetrics Group.

From 1996 through 2007, international institutional investors sought to serve as lead plaintiff in a U.S. securities class-action lawsuit 234 times in 134 separate cases. Those investors have filed lead plaintiff motions in more than 5 percent of all new federal securities class actions in every year since 2002, RMG reports in a white paper (registration required), “Globalization in Securities Class Actions.”

Institutional investors from Finland, Bahrain, and the Czech Republic all filed the first-ever lead plaintiff motion by investors from one of those countries in 2007. In contrast to earlier years, 2007 saw a sharp increase in the number of international institutional investors from Sweden, Britain, and the British Virgin Islands filing lead plaintiff motions.

Meanwhile, RiskMetrics says early enthusiasm by German investors for involvement in U.S. class actions has remained tepid, with the number of participants remaining steady at levels two-thirds below their historical peak. Canadian investors also continued a historical trend of increased activity in even numbered years, followed by 50 percent or greater of drop-offs in odd numbered years.

2007 also saw the first reported securities class action filed in Africa, in a case involving the Nigerian subsidiary of Cadbury Schweppes. The RMG report notes that legislation became effective in 2008 in a number of European countries that would allow securities class actions for the first time, as well.

The RMG report posits a number of reasons to explain the continued trend of increased international institutional investor involvement in securities class actions, including:

The educational and marketing efforts of U.S.-based securities litigators;

Increasing emphasis by U.S. plaintiff law firms on solidifying their relationships with international institutional investors and outside counsel for those investors;

A gradual realization, both domestically and abroad, that institutional investors of all stripes are failing to file claims in securities class actions to get their share of the settlement proceeds; and

The increasing availability and acceptance of securities litigation in non-U.S. jurisdictions.

“As other cultures become more familiar, both at home and abroad, with the concepts and realities of securities litigation, they are increasingly likely to become involved with it,” the report states. “Despite the increasing number of jurisdictions now allowing some form of securities litigation, the most robust system for investors seeking recoveries through securities litigation remains here in the U.S.”

The report updates a May 2007 report and revises some of the prior published data due to additional research and delays in receiving confirmation from some of the law firms involved in the nationality of their clients.

RiskMetrics also notes that “F-cubed” lawsuits, where foreign investors who bought shares of a foreign company on a foreign stock exchange still sue that company in U.S. courts, represent just a fraction of the activity of international institutional investors in U.S. securities class actions, despite the attention such suits get in U.S. courts.

RiskMetrics plans to publish a separate paper to examine the “opt-out” or so called “direct” actions that the same investors are filing, a phenomenon it says is at least partially in response to court decisions excluding international investors in certain cases, such as against Vivendi.