Wanda Sports Group, the sports arm of Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda, announced today that a class action lawsuit against the company relating to its initial public offering in USA last year has been dropped.

Last November, Cherry Fu, an investor in WSG, led a class action complaint against the company, the underwriters in the IPO and certain current and former directors, in a US district court in Oregon seeking a jury trial and financial compensation.

The lawsuit alleged that WSG and its financial advisers had issued false and misleading statements on the IPO, and that by the time of the action, the company had "lost nearly 60 per cent of its value - damaging investors."

WSG denied any wrongdoing.

In a statement today, the company, whose assets include Infront, the international sports marketing agency, said the complaint “has been voluntarily dismissed in its entirety, without prejudice, by the lead plaintiff.”

Last July’s IPO raised $190 million from the sale of around 23.8 million shares on the US Nasdaq.

However, this was less than had been expected, as the shares sold at $8 instead of a previously-stated target of between $9 and $11. This was understood to have been down to lukewarm US investor demand for Chinese stocks at the time.

In March of this year, Wanda agreed a deal to sell Ironman, the organiser of long distance triathlon events, to US media company Advance Publications in a deal worth $730 million.

Sportcal