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Who Got the Stress-Test Work?

As a result of the “stress tests,” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told 10 major US financial institutions that he wanted them to raise $75 billion in the next six months.  They raced to the markets, which The Wall Street Journal said would lead to “Treasury’s I-Banker Stress Test: 6 Months of Overtime.”

Forget the bankers. On deals like these, it’s the lawyers working overtime, so we set out to find out who got the work.

After the jump, analysis of the 10 banks’ issuances and the counsel on both sides.

We focused exclusively on common-stock offerings. A number of these banks are also issuing “TARP Preferred” stock as well as raising capital by offering debt and selling assets.

Bank Amount Issuer’s Counsel UW Counsel
B of A $11 bn McGuireWoods MoFo
Wells Fargo $8.5 bn Wachtell Cravath
GMAC $7.5 bn Wachtell Sonnenschein
Citi $3 bn Cleary N/A
Regions Fin. $1.8 bn Sullivan & Cromwell Simpson Thacher
SunTrust $1.25 bn King & Spalding Sullivan & Cromwell
KeyCorp $750 mill Squire Sanders Sullivan & Cromwell
Morgan Stanley $4 bn Davis Polk Sidley
Fifth Third $750 mill Graydon Head Sullivan & Cromwell
PNC $650 mill Cravath Wachtell

S&C continues to rack up the TARP work, even when they’re not on the government side. The firm represents one issuer and three consortia of underwriters – and Morgan Stanley participated in all three.

Our friends at Wachtell are, not surprisingly, on the issuer side for two deals. Together with Cravath, they won Dealmaker of the Week for the Wells Fargo offering. The GMAC engagement was also a no-brainer; the company turned to Ed Herlihy to steer it through the TARP-application process. But why didn’t they get the Bank of America work? They’re doing everything else for the bank. Still, they got the two deals that mattered, getting $16 billion in league-table credit.

Cravath was the only other firm with multiple engagements, and was on both sides: issuer for PNC and underwriters for Wells Fargo.

Related posts:

  1. Quick Shucks – 7/14/09
  2. Government Work Not Supposed to Be This Hard
  3. Best Law Firms List Out – Wachtell Not #1
  4. Bad Blood Building Between Wachtell and Paul Weiss
  5. Cravath Not Catching That Pepsi Spirit

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