| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fed bailouts, mergers, stake sales and bankruptcies ... as Wall Street has
transformed, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP chairman H. Rodgin Cohen has
been there.
Alongside Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz co-chair Edward Herlihy, Cohen is easily one of the top banking M&A attorneys and as a Wall Street Journal item Thursday put it, counts "virtually all of Wall Street as his client." He's had a busy few months and in particular, a busy few weeks.
The Journal points out some interesting tidbits about Cohen: that his West Virginia roots instill a folksiness, handy as brokers talk between Washington and Wall Street; that, in a personal note, he has a fascination with Sheryl Crow; and that he is rightly in constant demand:
Meanwhile, from the Bear Stearns Cos. saga in March to the current Citigroup Inc.-Wachovia Corp.-Wells Fargo & Co. battle, The Deal has also tracked Cohen and his firm's roles helping navigate clients through the financial storm: In late September, as the bailout seemed largely a foregone conclusion and after Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley transformed themselves into bank holding companies, Cohen lured J. Virgil Mattingly Jr., a former general counsel at the Federal Reserve Board, to join S&C's D.C. office as senior counsel. "There is no one more knowledgeable about the Bank Holding Company Act than Virgil," he told The Deal's Amy Wu. Also in September, Cohen advised J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. as it agreed to a $1.9 billion deal for most of Washington Mutual Inc. assets. That came months after Cohen advised Bear Stearns board in its fire sale to J.P. Morgan, having been, as The Deal's David Marcus wrote at the time "involved in every one of the recent sovereign wealth fund investments in U.S. commercial banks, [giving] experience Bear needed over the weekend as it dealt with U.S. regulators." More recently, Cohen is advising Wachovia as its fate (a sale to Wells Fargo, to Citigroup, a breakup, etc.) hangs in the balance. But it's hard being one of the few top acts in town, and as the Journal points out, sometimes Cohen winds up on a different side of the table than a short time before. He advised Wachovia on early merger talks with Morgan Stanley, and after those fell apart, Cohen and others advised Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, another longtime S&C client, on its plan to take a 20% stake in Morgan Stanley. Similarly, he weighed in on Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s quest to avoid collapse (which meant S&C couldn't chime in for Merrill Lynch & Co. in its hurried sale to Bank of American Corp.). But when the tide shifted for Lehman, the failed firm tapped Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP as bankruptcy counsel. S&C, then, was freed up to advise Barclays plc as it moved in on Lehman's U.S. investment bank. The Lehman meltdown, which Cohen told the Journal has been the low point of the financial crisis, also came as the Fed's bailout for longtime S&C client American International Group Inc. was upon it. Cohen was also there in early September advising Fannie Mae (alongside fellow mortgage titan Freddie Mac) as it was seized by the Feds. And back in April, Cohen advised National City Corp. on a 9.7% stake sale to Corsair Capital LLC and TPG-Axon Capital Management LP. Now that National City is reportedly on the block, Cohen's likely got a role there too. - Carolyn Murphy See 10/6 Dealmakers slideshow
Categories Deal Video
    Community
 Elsewhere on The Deal.comDealwatch
The Deal MagazineCorporate Dealmaker
The Deal VideoCategories
Blog roll
Archives
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
