*1 This matter is before the Court on the Kraft Heinz Defendants’ Motion to Compel Discovery from Union Asset Management Holding AG [Doc. No. 367]. For the reasons that follow, Defendants’ motion is denied.

Plaintiffs bring this putative class action securities fraud suit on behalf of themselves and all other persons who purchased securities of the Kraft Heinz Company (“KHC” or “Kraft Heinz”) during the period from November 5, 2015 to August 7, 2019. Plaintiffs allege that, in 2015, KHC “announced to shareholders a plan to eliminate $1.5 billion in cost saving by targeting redundancies and synergies” and “told investors that these efforts were a success and that Kraft Heinz was using the savings derived from eliminating waste to promote innovation and brand growth.” (Consol. Am. Class Action Compl. ¶ 1.) According to Plaintiffs, however, Defendants actually “implemented extreme and indiscriminate cost-cutting measures that decimated Kraft's supply-chain, alienated vendors, and drove away critically important customers.” (Id. at ¶ 2.) Plaintiffs allege that this ultimately culminated in KHC disclosing “a historic $15.4 billion write-down in the value of the Company's Oscar Mayer and Kraft trademarks and other intangible assets.” (Id. at ¶ 3.) Plaintiffs maintain that, following the write-down, “KHC's stock price plummeted by nearly 50%, causing massive losses to investors.” [Doc. No. 405 at 13.]

Union Asset Management Holding AG (“Union”) is a Lead Plaintiff in this case. In describing its structure, Union states that it “has twenty-three subsidiaries, including management companies that provide investment management services (UIN, UIL, and UIP)” and “Union provides legal and administrative services to UIN, UIL, and UIP, which in turn act as the management companies for hundreds of independent funds for retail and institutional investors.” (Union Resp. at 3.) Out of the hundreds of funds, 22 funds that traded in Kraft Heinz stock during the relevant time period have assigned their claims to Union in this matter (the “Assigned Funds”). However, the Kraft Heinz Defendants (“Defendants”) assert that at the Rule 30(b)(6) depositions of Union's representatives they learned for the first time that other of Union's funds may also have traded in Kraft Heinz stock during the pertinent timeframe. Disputes between the parties have arisen concerning whether Union is obligated to produce information concerning those additional funds. Through their motion,[1] Defendants seek an order compelling Union to “produce documents and information regarding all Union funds that bought or sold Kraft Heinz common stock or options during the Class Period.” (Defs.’ Memo. at 1.) As characterized by Union, Defendants are seeking discovery concerning “Unassigned Funds,” i.e., “funds that chose not to assign their claims to Union, will not share in any recovery with the Assigned Funds, and are not parties to this action.” (Union Resp. at 1.)

*2 Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 provides that “[p]arties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 34; Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(3)(B). “The party requesting discovery bears the initial burden of establishing its relevancy.” Eternity Mart, Inc. v. Nature's Sources, LLC, No. 19-cv-02436, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 198880, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 15, 2019) (citations omitted); see also Art Akiane LLC v. Art & SoulWorks, LLC, No. 19 C 2952, 2020 WL 6509228, at *3 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 5, 2020) (collecting cases). If the requesting party meets its burden, “the party opposing discovery has the burden of proving that the requested discovery should be disallowed.” Sols. Team v. Oak St. Health, MSO, LLC, No. 17 CV 1879, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 132847, at *7 (N.D. Ill. July 16, 2021) (citation omitted).

To reiterate, “[u]nder general discovery principles, the party seeking to compel discovery has the burden of showing relevance.” Gruenstein v. Browning, No. 1:17-CV-2328, 2022 WL 3213261, at *7 (N.D. Ill. June 21, 2022) (citation omitted); see also Kove IO, Inc. v. Amazon Web Servs., Inc., No 18 C 8175, 2021 WL 4516413, at *2 (N.D. Ill. July 14, 2021) (“A party moving to compel production bears the initial burden of establishing that the information sought is relevant.”) (citation omitted). Here, the Court finds that Defendants have not met their burden of demonstrating that discovery pertaining to funds that have not assigned their claims to Union and are not part of this case is sufficiently relevant to require that Union be compelled to produce such information. Along those lines, the Court concludes that all of the bases of relevance raised by Defendants are speculative and ultimately unconvincing.

Defendants argue that discovery pertaining to the Unassigned Funds is relevant because Union's portfolio managers (including portfolio managers for the Unassigned Funds) share information between each other. According to Defendants, “[i]n light of Union's collaborative approach to trading, the knowledge of portfolio managers for the Excluded Funds that traded Kraft Heinz stock is relevant to trading decisions of the portfolio managers for the Included Fund [sic] that also made such trades.” (Defs.’ Reply at 8.) However, Union represents to the Court that it “performed a comprehensive search for every piece of analysis available to the portfolio managers for the Assigned Funds” and “has already produced all research relevant to the Assigned Funds’ trading decisions for their transactions in the Kraft securities at issue.” (Union Resp. at 8-9.) Union also convincingly points out that Defendants apparently “have not managed to locate a single document in Union's expensive productions that reference any analysis by a portfolio manager for an Unassigned Fund.” (Id. at 9 n.4.) Under the circumstances, the Court agrees with Union that Defendants’ discovery requests could yield at most irrelevant research not relied on by any Assigned Fund portfolio manager.

Defendants also argue that discovery pertaining to the Unassigned Funds is “relevant to whether Union is an adequate and typical class representative.” (Defs.’ Memo. at 11.) In advancing that argument, Defendants assert in a vague fashion that the requested information may strengthen their argument (raised in opposition to Plaintiffs’ class certification motion) that Union is subject to “unique inquiries” and “unique defenses [that] would distract from class-wide issues.” (Id.) In particular, Defendants contend that the disputed discovery is “relevant to whether Union may avail itself of the fraud-on-the-market presumption” because it is possible that Union “would have bought or sold the [Kraft Heinz] stock even had [it] been aware that the stock's price was tainted by fraud.” (Id. at 12.) However, Defendants’ motion is lacking in specifics and the Court finds that these bases of relevance are speculative at best and insufficient to warrant an order compelling Union to produce information pertaining to funds that have not assigned their claims to Union and are not part of this case. See DeLeon-Reyes v. Guevara, No. 1:18-CV-01028, at *7 (N.D. Ill. June 8, 2020) (“[S]uch guesswork does not establish relevance, nor does it provide an example of why the requested information is relevant. Without more information from Plaintiffs, their speculation amounts to an impermissible fishing expedition.”).

*3 Defendants raise in passing the hypothetical that one of Union's funds may have shorted Kraft Heinz stock and thus engaged in transactions that are inconsistent with the theory of Plaintiffs’ case. (Defs.’ Memo. at 2.) That speculative basis of relevance fails in light of Union's definitive statement that “[n]o Union-affiliated fund shorted Kraft Heinz stock during the Class Period.” (Union Resp. at 1; see also id. at 9 (“[N]o Unassigned Fund shorted Kraft Heinz stock.”).)

Finally, Defendants also request in their motion that “the class certification record be held open until 30 days following completion of production of [the requested] documents to allow the Kraft Heinz Defendants to take additional deposition testimony and supplement the record as appropriate.” (Defs.’ Memo. at 3.) This request is denied as moot given that the Court has denied Defendants’ predicate motion to compel production of the requested information.

For the foregoing reasons, the Kraft Heinz Defendants’ Motion to Compel Discovery from Union Asset Management Holding AG [Doc. No. 367] is denied.

SO ORDERED.