看起来金沙集团目前财务状况是稳健的，但是一些股东仍在试图弥补2008公司股价大跌而造成的损失。其中一位投资者欧内斯特·克莱因施密特的律师，周五在克拉克地方法院，对金沙现任和前任董事会及管理高层提出集体诉讼，其中包括董事长兼首席执行官谢尔登·阿德尔森，早前已有至少五桩类似的诉讼案。周五的诉讼指出投资者的利益在公司股价由2008年10月1日的36.11美元以78%的跌幅跌至2008年11月6日的7.85美元期间遭受惨重损失。
这一下滑是发生在金沙集团股价因流动资金短缺而自2007年每股144美元惨跌至2009年初1.39美元期间期间。周五的诉讼把股价下跌的责任归咎于公司董事会和管理高层违背股东利益斥资20亿美元在澳门、新加坡和美国开设赌场度假村。金沙集团官方多次表示其流动资金问题并不是因为管理过失，而是2008年的全球金融危机造成的。但是提出诉讼的股东们并不同意这一说辞。（2012年3月27日博之道出）
“被告作出了一系列重大的虚假的和误导性的陈述报告，掩盖了金沙集团存在的流动资金危机已经使公司坐在了火山口上的事实：因为缺乏足够的资金来源公司无法继续其数十亿美元的在建开发项目”诉讼中指出“他们意图利用虚假报告拖延时间来找到解决流动资金危机的办法，但是2008年全球金融危机的到来使他们没有得到预期的足够时间”
诉讼书指出：2008年10-11月份股价大跌正是由于董事会首次承认“金沙集团已经几个月的流动资金短缺，因为没有流动资金支持不得不停止在建项目的建设开发，并且急需资金注入避免破产”。问题的解决是由阿德尔森个人向公司进行了超过1亿美元的注资，但是诉讼股东声称其时他们已经损失惨重。与此次诉讼类似的另一起诉讼在2009年11月曾被同一法院的驳回。当时，艾伦·厄尔法官裁定诉讼股东需要提出证据证明董事会成员有管理不当或是违背股东利益的行为。
克莱因施密特的此次诉讼与2009年诉讼的关键区别在于他们之前进行了一份对董事会是否涉案的调查。在前次的诉讼中股东提出（对董事会进行调查）是浪费时间，因为阿德尔森控制了董事会，但是艾伦法官并不认同这一说法并指出股东并未提出有关的证据。但是在此次诉讼中，克莱因施密特的律师指出早在2010年6月，克莱因施密特就曾基于公司利益要求董事会应注意管理层的所作所为，但是这一要求被立即拒绝。诉讼指出“显然，董事会没有进行应有的调查和努力妥善处理这一要求”。
克莱因密特要求判决公司赔偿所有因为管理层失职造成的实际损失及连带损失，他是代表拉斯维加斯的Aldrich法律事务所、宾夕法尼亚的维恩律师事务所、Maniskas律师事务所以及科罗拉多的舒曼律师事务所提出诉讼。此次诉讼是在股东就此问题在联邦法院提出的两件类似诉讼之一。联邦地方法官肯特道森去年曾拒绝驳回这两件联合诉讼，但是他对指控的最终结果表示怀疑。这一联合诉讼是独立于相关的基于（由美国证券和交易委员会正在审议的）反海外腐败法对于金沙集团提出的股东诉讼。
金沙集团因其在亚洲赌业投资的强劲回报摆脱了流动资金危机并被认为是目前博彩业金融状况最好的企业。该公司目前财源滚滚，去年四季度达到320.1亿美元。公司宣布在二月份将支付给股东每股1美元的红利。（2012年3月27日博之道出）
译文：
Las Vegas Sands facing new suit over 2008 stock price decline
Las Vegas Sands Corp. may be in sound financial condition today, but some shareholders are still trying to recover losses from a steep decline in the company’s stock price in late 2008.
Attorneys for one of the investors, Ernest Kleinschmidt, filed suit Friday in Clark County District Court against a group of current and former Las Vegas Sands directors and officers, including Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson.
Like at least five other lawsuits filed earlier, Friday’s complaint says investors were damaged when Las Vegas Sands’ “stock price cratered from $36.11 per share on Oct. 1, 2008, to $7.85 per share on Nov. 6, 2008, a 78 percent decrease.”
The plunge was part of a broader decline in the stock price from $144 in 2007 to $1.38 per share in early 2009 as Las Vegas Sands worked through a liquidity crunch.
Friday’s lawsuit blames the stock price decline on breaches of fiduciary duty by management and the board that related to concerns over whether Las Vegas Sands could come up with $20 billion needed to build casino resorts planned in Macau, Singapore and the United States.
Las Vegas Sands has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and says its liquidity issues in 2008 were related to the global economic meltdown, not mismanagement.
Suing shareholders disagree.
”Defendants issued a series of materially false and misleading statements that failed to disclose that Las Vegas Sands was facing a liquidity crisis so severe it threatened to crater the company because Las Vegas Sands lacked the cash and funding sources that would enable it to continue most of its multibillion-dollar ongoing or planned construction projects,” Friday’s lawsuit said. ”False statements were designed and intended to buy them enough time to find a palatable solution to the company’s liquidity crisis, but the clock ran out on defendants long before they anticipated it would, when the economic tsunami of the fall of 2008 hit.”
Shareholders suffered in October and November 2008 when the directors ”effectively conceded that Las Vegas Sands had been facing a liquidity crisis for many months, that Las Vegas Sands had no liquidity, that it would have to halt most of its ongoing construction projects and that it required an emergency infusion of cash in order to avoid bankruptcy,” the lawsuit said.
The concerns were eventually resolved when Adelson pumped more than $1 billion of his personal cash into the company, but shareholders claim that by then the damage was done to them.
Friday’s lawsuit is similar to a group of three Las Vegas Sands lawsuits that were dismissed by a judge in the same court in November 2009.（2012年3月27日博之道出）
In the suits dismissed in 2009, Judge Allan Earl ruled the shareholders failed to show mismanagement by board members or that they breached their fiduciary duties.
A key difference between the 2009 lawsuits and the one brought by Kleinschmidt involved whether – prior to suing – the shareholders had made a demand upon the Las Vegas Sands board.
In the earlier suits, shareholders said that would have been a waste of time, since Adelson controls the board. Earl disagreed and found the shareholders didn’t show Adelson exerted undue influence on the other board members.
But in Friday’s lawsuit, attorneys for Kleinschmidt said that in June 2010, he demanded that the board – on behalf of the company – take action against certain current and former directors and executive officers so the company could recover its damages. That demand was promptly rejected, the lawsuit said.
”Clearly, the board’s failure to properly respond to the demand and conduct a good faith, reasonable investigation is improper and demonstrates the board’s lack of diligence and good faith,” the lawsuit said.
Kleinschmidt seeks judgment ”in favor of the company for the amount of damages sustained by the company as a result of defendants’ breaches of fiduciary duties” and other unspecified damages. He is represented in the lawsuit by four law firms accustomed to filing shareholder lawsuits: Aldrich Law Firm Ltd. in Las Vegas; The Weiser Law Firm P.C. in Berwyn, Pa.; Ryan & Maniskas LLP in Wayne, Pa.; and The Shuman Law Firm in Boulder, Colo.
Friday’s suit is on top of two class-action suits filed by shareholders over the same issues and that are pending in federal court.
U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson in Las Vegas refused last year to dismiss those two combined lawsuits, but said in his order keeping them alive that he ”has doubts about the ultimate viability of the allegations.”
The group of lawsuits over the 2008 liquidity issues is separate from a group of shareholder lawsuits related to Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – a topic under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Having overcome its liquidity issues, Las Vegas Sands is now considered to be among the strongest financially in the casino industry thanks to strong results from its Asia casinos.
The company is making so much money – $320.1 million in the fourth quarter – that it announced in February it would pay out a portion of its profits to shareholders in the form of an annual dividend of $1 per share.