The Beginning

In the summer of 1992, a Chicago Board Options Exchange market-maker named James Tharin went on the Injured Reserve List. This was in the days of open outcry trading, and a packed trading pit was not the best place to have a broken leg.

Fortunately, Jim was not sidelined for long. A lawyer friend called him with a problem: there was a proposed settlement in the BMW M5 Litigation where the class members would receive discount coupons on future BMW purchases. Might Jim have an idea for how to create a market for such coupons? Jim not only managed to create a market in this case, but built a company initially dedicated to creating markets in class action coupon settlements.

Over the next two decades, Certificate Clearing Corporation—the first CCC—created markets in 18 different class action settlements and helped claimants recover close to $230 million, very often by helping them to sell their coupons and realize cash where otherwise they would have received nothing.

Expanding into securities settlements

In 2005, Jim started another class action recovery service after receiving a notice in the Options Antitrust Litigation. It named him a defendant in the Options litigation along with every other member of the Chicago Board Options Exchange and other option exchanges. However, neither Jim nor his financial entities were members during the entire 12-year class period. So, he argued to the plaintiffs’ attorneys that he and other traders in such a position should be eligible to submit their trades during the years they were non-members, and thus participate in the settlement as claimants.

The attorneys agreed and he was able to seek recovery as a class member. Soon Jim was helping other investor claimants secure recoveries in securities class action cases, and a new business model emerged—ongoing monitoring and claim filing for investor firms to recover every potential dollar owed to their clients. A new "CCC" company, Chicago Clearing Corporation, was born.

Today: The premier class action recovery service

Chicago Clearing Corporation is now the preeminent securities class action claim recovery service. Since 2005, our client base has grown from one client (some guy named Jim) to over 3,200 global clients including the world’s largest bank trust departments, brokerage firms, registered investment advisors, hedge funds, pension funds, plaintiff firms, family offices, clearing firms, trading firms, market makers, and institutions of every ilk.

In addition, CCC files claims in financial antitrust settlements in every esoteric financial class action for an assortment of worldwide clients, such as FCMs, CTOs, CTAs, trading firms, traders, market makers, and prop desks. Our clients are some of the most sophisticated traders on the planet.

CCC has developed and honed a unique set of skills to recover what our clients are owed. These include extensive monitoring capabilities to track all pertinent litigations from inception to completion; retrieving, indexing and normalizing data from all sources; refined analytic processes to properly value and purchase claims; a team of highly knowledgeable claim filers and customer service representatives; secure data management and warehousing capabilities; and a reporting portal second to none.

As we build on more than three decades of service, CCC looks forward to helping thousands more businesses and individuals take advantage of every available class action recovery opportunity across the globe.