Maya Saxena
Securities Litigation · Investor-Side Litigation · Governance · Public Funds
We wanted to do business a different way.
Starting Over in Boca Raton
In 2006, Maya Saxena walked away from the managing partnership of the Florida office of one of the country's largest class action firms to start something that did not yet exist: a securities litigation firm built her way.
She founded Saxena White with Joseph White, and the two went head-to-head against the most established, best-resourced securities defense firms in the country. The bet was that a leaner firm with better client service, deeper preparation, and a genuinely diverse team could win cases the giants assumed belonged to them. Two decades, billions of dollars in recoveries, and a string of precedent-setting results later, the bet reads less like a risk than a blueprint.
Saxena White is a woman- and minority-owned firm representing institutional investors in the securities bar, with certifications from the Women's Business Enterprise National Council and the Florida State Minority Supplier Development Council. Saxena carries that distinction deliberately in a field long dominated by men, and sees it reflected back from the increasingly diverse bench her lawyers appear before. From its Boca Raton headquarters the firm has grown to offices in White Plains, California, and Delaware, sustained by what she considers its real asset: the quality, integrity, and camaraderie of its people.
From the Attorney General's Office
Saxena earned her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University and her law degree from Pepperdine University School of Law, then learned to try cases the public-service way — as an assistant attorney general in Fort Lauderdale, handling civil matters at trial and on appeal for the State of Florida.
The securities work that followed built on that foundation, and one early result still stands out in the field's history: the Sunbeam litigation, which produced a $110 million settlement with Arthur Andersen — among the largest ever paid by an accounting firm — and a $15 million personal contribution from former chief executive Al Dunlap. The lesson carried forward into everything after it: professionals and executives around a fraud can be held accountable alongside the company.
Choosing the Right Vehicle for the Corporate Failure
Saxena's cases begin with a question most firms skip: what kind of claim actually fits the harm? When shareholders were deceived and lost money, the answer is a securities class action and classwide recovery. When the wrongdoing injured the company itself, the answer is a derivative suit — corporate recovery plus governance reform. Matching the vehicle to the failure is the discipline that runs through her results.
Her pension-fund counseling applies the same rigor before any case is filed: identifying covered securities and transactions, evaluating portfolio losses and corrective events, preserving filing deadlines, selecting available forums, and deciding whether to lead a class, remain an absent member, pursue a direct claim, or take no action at all. Cross-border holdings add transaction-location and instrument questions after Morrison, and Saxena maps domestic and international holdings against available jurisdictions without assuming that a United States class covers every purchase. Trustees and authorized officers receive litigation choices in a form their fiduciary process can actually evaluate — whether the decision is to file, lead, continue investigating, negotiate, remain in a class, pursue another forum, or decline.
Eight Years Against Wilmington Trust
The Wilmington Trust securities litigation followed the bank's 2010 merger announcement and later disclosures concerning its commercial-real-estate loan portfolio, with investors alleging that the bank and other defendants concealed the extent of troubled loans.
Saxena led the firm's litigation team while public pension funds served as lead plaintiffs, and the case demanded staying power: nearly eight years of contested motions, discovery coordinated with related public proceedings, loan-level and financial-reporting evidence, expert work, and mediation. Settlements totaled $210 million, including a separate auditor payment, with final approval granted on November 19, 2018 — a recovery lead counsel estimated at nearly forty percent of likely recoverable damages, several times the typical yield in securities class actions.
Wells Fargo: The Company as Client
The Wells Fargo shareholder derivative litigation arose from the bank's sales-practice scandal and challenged oversight and governance conduct by current and former directors and officers. Because the action was derivative, the corporation itself — not a class of investors — received the relief, and the relief was substantial: a $240 million cash payment to Wells Fargo funded by insurers, together with governance measures and related commitments.
The Northern District of California granted final approval on April 7, 2020, describing the resolution as an excellent result for shareholders. Saxena played a key role with co-counsel for the shareholder plaintiffs, holding together the asserted corporate injury, the cash paid to the company, the governance terms, and the release of the company's claims within a single approved resolution — derivative practice at the scale of one of America's largest banks.
The Lorax Case
Rayonier involved allegations concerning timber inventory, harvest levels, and the sustainability of the company's reported business model — inside the office, Saxena's team called it the "Lorax case," a securities fraud suit that turned on trees. The plaintiffs litigated for more than two years, defeated a motion to dismiss, developed class proof connecting operational forestry measures to company statements, market effects, and class damages, and secured a court-approved $73 million settlement.
HD Supply concerned statements about supply-chain recovery and business performance. Saxena White served as lead counsel and advanced the case through motion practice and mediation to a $50 million class settlement, with final judgment entered by the Northern District of Georgia on July 21, 2020 — among the largest securities recoveries ever achieved in that district. Forestry measures in one case, supply-chain remediation in the other: different operating evidence, the same discipline of tying what a company said to what its records showed.
Built to Last
Saxena has built Saxena White to sustain long securities and governance cases — stable staffing, discovery systems, expert development, client communication, mediation, approval, and administration — because the cases she takes are measured in years and the clients she serves are measured in generations of retirees. Wilmington Trust, Wells Fargo, Rayonier, and HD Supply required different remedies and different operating evidence while maintaining the same client supervision and case development through final approval.
She remains what she was in 2006: a founder who splits her time evenly between litigating and standing in front of the pension trustees whose members' retirements are the point of all of it — teaching, reporting, and answering the phone. The different way of doing business turned out to be the durable one.