With clients such as UBS AG, Goldman Sachs & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corporation, Sullivan & Cromwell has seen plenty of challenging cases arising from the 2008 financial crisis. “We’ve been at the center of the most important securities litigation for the last two years,” says practice head Robert Giuffra Jr. The firm helped more than a dozen banks recover billions from MBIA Inc. when they sued over a restructuring that left the monoline insurer unable to pay out on their policies. (Morgan Stanley alone collected $1.1 billion.) And Sullivan & Cromwell’s precedential win in Fait v. Regions Financial Corporation sets a high bar for securities cases brought over accounting statements that can be counted as opinion, such as loan loss reserves.
But clients outside the financial industry rely on S&C’s securities litigation prowess, too. Oil giant BP plc turned to the firm to handle shareholder litigation after the Deepwater Horizon spill sent the company’s stock price plummeting; S&C got billions of dollars worth of claims dismissed and defeated a motion for class certification. The firm also pushed $5 billion in shareholder claims against Porsche Automobil Holding SE out of state and federal courts in New York and sent them to Germany, where their prospects are far dimmer.
