On February 9 Andrew Ceresney was still in his office at 2:30 a.m. The Debevoise & Plimpton partner had been working for the better part of a year, along with a raft of other lawyers, to negotiate a deal between federal and state attorneys general and a handful of big banks. The banks were accused of “robo-signing”allowing employees to approve legal documents without proper reviewand other foreclosure errors. Five banks had made a $25 billion proposal, but only got 40 attorneys general to sign on. Now, three days later, after further negotiations with crucial states like California and New York, a final draft that the others would approve was circulating by e-mail. “That’s when I knew we were finally there,” Ceresney says. The settlement marked what the U.S. Department of Justice calls the largest federal/state civil settlement ever obtained. As part of the settlement, the five banks that agreed to the dealAlly Financial Inc., Bank of America Corporation, Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Companywill be required to implement new mortgage servicing standards and dedicate $20 billion of the settlement to borrowers for financial relief.
On paper, Ceresney’s client was JPMorgan. But lawyers involved in the negotiations say that Ceresney played a bigger role than that, acting as the primary go-between for the banks during talks with the Justice Department and state attorneys general. Amid a group of lawyers that included H. Rodgin Cohen of Sullivan & Cromwell and Ceresney’s partner Mary Jo White, the task of coordinating the banks’ positions and getting the feds and states on board with their proposals fell to the 40-year-old New Yorker.
