Equinix Leaders Sued by Shareholder Over Accounting Fraud Claims

Equinix Inc. executives misclassified recurring capital expenditures, misleading stockholders on a key metric of the real estate investment trust’s value, a shareholder derivative lawsuit said.

Several current and former leaders harmed Equinix by causing it to issue misleading financial results and proxy statements that exposed it to an ongoing proposed securities fraud class action, shareholder Boris Benkovski told the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

The data-center operator inflated its adjusted funds from operation, which propped up the stock price before it slid on a short-seller Hindenburg Research report that claimed accounting manipulation had boosted its metric ...