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Paul Weiss chases litigation wave with world’s foremost FCPA expert | Features | The Lawyer

October 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The startling statistics are as follows: In 2007 the total amount of FCPA-related fines was $155m £98.1m). In the first quarter of 2010 it was $1.45bn.

Although the FCPA is just a part of most firms’ litigation offerings, the figures suggest it must form an increasingly large portion. What is certain is that, with an ever-tougher line being taken by the world’s leading regulators and growing cooperation between bodies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the UK’s Financial Services Authority, the number of matters and size of fines look set only to increase.

No wonder there is a scramble in the US and further afield to hire the top litigation talent. And with the increasingly tough stance being taken by regulators – as reflected in the FCPA fines boom – this scramble for lawyers with an inside track is unlikely to subside.

Firms as diverse in their strategic approach to the market as Davis Polk & Wardwell, where the FCPA is currently the core of the white- collar practice, and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer at least have one thing in common – they are staffing up on disputes specialists.

via Paul Weiss chases litigation wave with world’s foremost FCPA expert | Features | The Lawyer.

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Should U.S. Firms Build Local Practices in Hong Kong? | American Lawyer

July 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The Agricultural Bank of Chinas initial public offering, expected to become the worlds largest, debuted Friday, landing squarely in the middle of a debate over whether leading Wall Street law firms should build local practice capability in Hong Kong.The IPO on the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges would seem an obvious rallying cry for those arguing that top American capital markets firms will miss out on deals without their own Hong Kong lawyers — except that the lead lawyers on the AgBank deal are from New Yorks Davis Polk & Wardwell, which only practices U.S. law.

via Should U.S. Firms Build Local Practices in Hong Kong?.

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Gibson Dunn, Davis Polk Lead as HP Snags Palm | The American Lawyer

April 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Hewlett-Packard has swooped in and acquired Palm Inc. for $1.2 billion amid rampant speculation that Asian companies were the leading contenders to acquire the hand-held device maker, according to Bloomberg.

And for its final major deal, Palm turned to Davis Polk & Wardwell instead of its traditional deal counsel at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a move our colleagues at The Recorder first reported on two weeks ago.

The switch isn’t that sudden, though, according to William Kelly, who led the Davis Polk team on the deal. The firm began doing work for Palm several years ago, at about the time that a management shake-up at the company saw Eric Benhamou leave his position as chair of the Palm board; Benhamou is close with Wilson chair Larry Sonsini, according to The Recorder, which helps explain why the company had turned to Wilson Sonsini for several of its prior landmark deals.

Not this time, says Kelly, whose relationship with Palm started when he answered an unexpected call from company executives. “I just answered my phone,” he says. “That’s always good business.” Davis Polk subsequently advised Palm on a December 2008 agreement with private equity firm Elevation Partners, which pumped $100 million into Palm and became the company’s lead investor, Kelly says.

Hewlett-Packard, represented in the Palm deal by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, has already secured Elevation Partners’ support for the acquisition, according to a source familiar with the matter. A team from Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett advised Elevation in those talks, the sources say. (For you U2 fans out there, Bono serves as a managing director for Elevation, and we can’t help but note that he’s wearing his trademark sunglasses even in the photograph used on his Elevation Web bio).

via Law.com – Gibson Dunn, Davis Polk Lead as HP Snags Palm.

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Antitrust Bar Reacts to New Merger Guidelines | National Law Journal

April 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday released proposed revisions to their horizontal merger guidelines, drawing a mixed reaction from the antitrust bar.

The guidelines were last modified in 1997, and the agencies said the new version, which practitioners describe as a top to bottom rewrite, is intended to “more accurately reflect the way the FTC and DOJ currently conduct merger reviews.”

Though the guidelines have no force of law, they are hugely influential. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz described the old guidelines as “one of the most cited documents in modern antitrust.”

To some, like Davis Polk & Wardwell counsel Michael Sohn, the new guidelines are “overall a very thoughtful and helpful effort.”

Sohn said the 34-page draft will better enable lawyers and companies to “predict if a merger can be done … the new guidelines conform to what the agencies are actually doing, and provide a much greater level of explanation of points that in some instances were in the old guidelines, but weren’t as fully developed.”

But Dechert partner Paul Denis, who was the principle draftsman of the 1992 guidelines (revised in 1997), said he is troubled by the “enormous amount of flexibility the government has given itself … you don’t know what they’ll do.”

Denis agreed his old guidelines were ripe for revision, but argued the new version is “not as helpful to the business community and the bar. With the old guidelines, you could read them and figure out where the government was likely to come out — you had a good idea where the line is. Now, the line has been re-drawn, but you don’t know where.”

via Law.com – Antitrust Bar Reacts to New Merger Guidelines.

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The New China Hands | Law.com

March 10, 2010 By

Just a decade ago, China’s rise as an economic superpower still seemed distant and uncertain. For Chinese lawyers able to study or work abroad, the United States seemed a safer bet than their homeland. Back then, the China practice of major international firms was still mainly the province of the Old China Hands — lawyers in the mold of Jerome Cohen and Owen Nee, who co-founded the first foreign law office in Beijing for Coudert Brothers in 1979. These early practices, which attracted many lawyers who perhaps had a deeper affinity for Chinese language and culture than the practice of law, were mainly “inbound” practices, focused on representing U.S. and other multinationals in opening factories and shops in China.

But with the country’s economic rise, the face of the China practice at international firms has grown increasingly … Chinese. Unlike their predecessors — who were mostly white males — New China Hands are largely of Chinese descent. Many, like Gao, left China to study abroad, joined top global firms, and are now heading back to take on leading roles at their firms’ Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong offices. They are joined by a new generation of expat lawyers with a far stronger mix of language and legal skills than their predecessors had.

“In five, seven years, there will [probably] be someone from mainland China sitting in this seat talking to you,” says William Barron, the decidedly non-Chinese senior partner in the Hong Kong office of Davis Polk & Wardwell. “And that’s as it should be. The group of Chinese lawyers we have in their 20s and 30s is just outstanding.”

via The New China Hands.

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SEC restructures to catch next Madoff | The Harvard Law Record

January 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Reeling from the fallout of the Madoff scandal, the Securities and Exchange Commission has been searching for a new strategy and new leadership in its mission to protect the investing public from fraud.  As part of this effort, the S.E.C. recently unveiled six new organizational departments that will lead units aimed at supervising particular domains of finance: asset management, market abuse, structured and new products, foreign corrupt practices, and municipal securities and public pensions.  These changes come with a public recognition that in the rapidly changing world of modern finance the Commission must be constantly vigilant to keep pace with innovation in the markets, as well as a keen awareness that in the wake of the Madoff fiasco the public and Congress are demanding swift action to improve the quality of financial industry oversight.

But while the Commission seeks new and innovative strategies for fulfilling its policy objectives, its core mission of overseeing financial markets continues to depend on its ability to directly probe into the activities of market players, and starting at the end of January, the front-lines inspectors in America's financial capital will have a new chief, private fund industry expert Norman Champ '89, who will take on the role of Regional Associate Director for the S.E.C.'s New York Regional Office.  Champ brings a wealth of experience as an attorney and industry insider, having worked for eight years at Davis Polk & Wardwell before becoming general counsel at Chilton Investments, a private investment management fund based in Stamford, Connecticut with over $7 billion in assets under management.  Champ served until the end of 2009 as Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Chilton, in addition to representing the interests of the hedge fund industry as a member of the board of directors of the Managed Funds Association.

via The Harvard Law Record – SEC restructures to catch next Madoff.

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