Earlier this year, MBIA got the go-ahead from New York Insurance Commissioner Eric DiNallo to effect what’s been called a “good bank/bad bank” split. The bond insurer split its loser mortgage business from its profitable U.S. municipal-bond insurance portfolio so it would be able to resume writing guarantees on municipal issuances.
Unfortunately, that dumped a lot of bad debt and risk on investors and counterparties. Now, a group of 18 banks are suing, saying the split “was ‘fraudulent’ and ‘an unlawful attempt to escape’ its contractual obligations to cover losses from souring mortgage securities.”
After the jump, the who’s who of BigLaw (including one of the stars of a big scandal from last year).
It’s rare to see so many banks agreeing on anything, so when they do, there’s bound to be plenty of BigLaw and this case is no exception. We had to go and get a copy of the complaint just to see who was invited (see below).
All told, it’s six AmLaw 100 firms, 15 partners, and one lucky associate.
Sullivan & Cromwell is lead counsel, with the sublimely coiffed Vin DiBlasi (of Charney v. S&C fame) (Yale BA ‘75, JD ‘78) running the show with assistance from partners Michael Tomaino (Duke BA ‘86, Cornell JD ‘89) and Julia Jordan (Georgetown BA ‘92, Case Western JD ‘96) and associate William Wagener.
A number of banks apparently weren’t comfortable with uber banking transactional lawyer Rog Cohen’s compadres from the slip & fall side of the house, so they brought their own counsel:
- Michael Feldberg (Harvard x2) of Allen & Overy represents Barclays;
- Brad Karp (Union BA ‘81, Harvard JD ‘84), chair of the firm, and Ted Wells (Holy Cross BA ‘72, Harvard MBA, JD ‘76), who is just a superstar, lead the Paul Weiss team representing Citibank, with assistance from partners Leslie Fagen (Yale BA ‘71, Columbia JD ‘74) and Claudia Hammerman, who is also sublimely coiffed – check her pic (Haverford BA ‘87, Harvard JD ‘91);
- Jay Kasner (Union BA ‘77, BU JD ‘80), Scott Musoff (Tufts BA ‘91, NYU JD ‘94), and George Zimmerman (CUNY Brooklyn BA ‘75, NYU JD ‘79) of Skadden represent Merrill Lynch and Bank of America;
- Scott Balber (Princeton BA ‘91, Duke JD ‘94) and David LeMay (Dartmouth BA ‘78, Michigan JD ‘81) of Chadbourne & Parke represent RBC; and
- Michael Luskin (Harvard BA ‘73, JD ‘77) and Robb Patryk (Yale BA ‘85, NYU JD ‘89), who uses nonstandard spellings for both his first name and surname, of Hughes Hubbard represent Societe Generale.
The remaining plaintiffs are ABN Amro, BNP Paribas, Calyon, CIBC, HSBC, JPMC, KBC Investments, Natixis, Cooperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank, RBS, SMBC Capital Markets, UBS, and Wachovia.
By the way, if anyone from the web teams at A&O or Paul Weiss reads this, your attorney searches suck – results come up blank when you type a name and hit <enter>. You can only get a result if you click <submit>, which is just horrendous coding. You’re welcome for the bug report.
The suit is ABN Amro et al. v. MBIA, No. 601475/2009 (May 13, 2009), Supreme Court of New York (Manhattan).
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wow – big law orgy.