* Fast moving developments in the Boston case. The FBI wanted your help finding these guys. Now it says one is already dead and the other is on the run. [New York Times]
* Wow. The accused ricin mailer is messed up. [Washington Post]
* Lawyer turns down an $8M settlement and wins $130M. If you believe the New York Post. And you shouldn’t. [New York Post]
Facebook went public less than a week ago. But, not unexpectedly, a lot has happened in the few days since. As with many highly anticipated events (e.g., the Star Wars reboot and Barack Obama’s presidency) a lot of the reaction to Facebook’s IPO has been negative and filled with disappointment.
We’ve already got shareholder lawsuits against Facebook and the NASDAQ stock exchange, a privacy lawsuit settlement, and questions about how the IPO may have revealed broader problems about the way the system works. On the upside, the company’s GC, Ted Ullyot, has been making headlines in a more positive way, which is to say the dude is making mad bank for someone working in-house.
It’s not every day that a partner leaves the storied firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. But it’s not every day that a suitor with comparable prestige, wealth, and WASPiness comes calling. Dealbook reports:
Morgan Stanley said on Thursday that it has hired Francis P. Barron, a partner at the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, as its chief legal officer. Mr. Barron will replace Gary G. Lynch, who will remain with Morgan Stanley as a vice chairman in London…. The hiring is the latest management shake-up under James P. Gorman, Morgan Stanley’s chief executive since the beginning of the year.
At Cravath, where he has worked for 32 years, Mr. Barron specialized in litigation, corporate matters and advising boards. Among his clients are financial firms like Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, UBS and Goldman Sachs, as well as General Electric.
Moving from a law firm to Wall Street isn’t uncommon. On New York magazine’s recent list of hottest Wall Street bachelors — co-authored by Bess Levin, of our sister site Dealbreaker, and Jessica Pressler — two out of the 15 “foxes of finance” have law degrees (one from Harvard and one from Seton Hall).
A move at this high a level, from a Cravath partnership to an investment bank, is less common. But such moves happen — and, interestingly enough, Frank Barron isn’t even the first ex-Cravath partner to wind up in a top position at Morgan Stanley….
* Bad news for the big three: the New York Times says Congress “is suffering from acute bailout fatigue.” [NYT]
* There were 13 law firm mergers in the third quarter this year (not unusual). The largest number of combinations (5) were in the southeast. [The Birmingham News]
* O.J. Simpson is finally going to jail. He will be sentenced today in Nevada. This time, he stole back sports memorabilia from two people. Can you think of a more inelegant end to the Simpson saga? [The Associated Press]
* If you break the law in New York, at least you get free day care. Thanks to Judge Judith S. Kaye (New York State’s cheif judge), there are 34 children’s centers across the state in family, criminal, and civil courts. They provide a safe and happy place for children whose parents are involved in legal battles. [NYT]
* The shareholder lawsuit against the merger of Bear Stearns and JPMorgan Chase was dismissed Thursday in the New York State Supreme Court. [Reuters]
* Singapore awarded Clifford Chance, White & Case, and Latham & Watkins licenses to practice law, as part of an attempt to compete with Hong Kong and other cities in China and the Middle East that have benefitted from having international law practices. [Bloomberg]
* Discover is mad at Morgan Stanley for secretly hanging-out with Visa and Mastercard behind Discover’s back. Sounds a lot like middle school, only in the real world, you can sue. [Bloomberg]
Lateral Moves:
* Tax litigators B. John Williams, Jr. and Alan Swirski, to Skadden Arps (DC), from Shearman & Sterling (DC).
The WSJ Law Blog refers to the two men as “Tax Litigation Studs.” First: What do these guys look like? Second: Is using the word “stud” conduct unbecoming an MSM blog? (Just kidding, Peter.)
* Geroge Sullivan, to Greenberg Traurig (NY), from Morgan Stanley (where he headed litigation at the firm’s retail brokerage and investment management arm). Government to Private Sector:
* Mark Feldman, to BDO Seidman’s litigation and fraud investigation practice, from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York (where he headed the office’s organized crime and racketeering section for over 10 years). Shearman Tax Litigation Studs Decamp to Skadden [WSJ Law Blog] Morgan Stanley Litigation Chief to Join Firm in NY [NYLawyer.com] Organized Crime Prosecutor Joins BDO Seidman [NYLawyer.com]
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We currently have a number of active openings for associate roles at US and UK firms in HK / China, Singapore and two new in-house openings. As always, please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com in order to get details of current openings in Asia, as well as to discuss the Asia markets in general and what we expect for openings later this year. Our Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney will be in Beijing the week of March 25 and Evan Jowers will be in Hong Kong the week of April 1, if you would like to meet them in person.
The US associate openings we have in law firms are in the usual areas of M&A, cap markets, FCPA / white collar litigation, finance, and project finance. The most urgent of our top tier (top 15 US or magic circle) law firm openings in Asia (among many other firm openings that we have in Asia) are as follows:
• 2nd to 5th year mandarin fluent M&A associates needed in Beijing and Hong Kong at several firms;
• Korean fluent 2nd to 4th year cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 5th year Japanese fluent M&A associates needed in Tokyo;
• 4th to 6th year mandarin fluent cap markets associate needed in Hong Kong;
• 2nd to 4th year M&A / cap markets mix associate needed in Singapore.
The last time I flapped my wings your way, I tried to make at least enough noise about your mobile phone to make you more than a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I did. If enough of us become anxious enough about the known and unknown unknowns and knowns in our mobile phones, then we can start making wise decisions about how to manage that information and its resultant investigations.
Today, I’d like to put a finer point on the last installment’s topic by asking a question that seemed to catch most attendees off-guard at a conference panel that I moderated last week: is there discoverable personal information in a mobile app? Our panelists’ answer was a uniform “yes” with one stating that, if he had to choose only one type of data that he could discover from a mobile phone, he’d choose app data. Why? Because there’s simply so much of it and because almost all of it is objective – not just user-created like an email – but machine-tracked like GPS, usage duration, log in and log out times, browsed web addresses, browsed actual addresses. Also, most of us seem to have the idea that data doesn’t actually “stick” to our mobile devices the way it “sticks” to our hard drives. Maybe there’s a disconnect based on the fact that our phones are mobile so we assume the data is mobile to?
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* Fast moving developments in the Boston case. The FBI wanted your help finding these guys. Now it says one is already dead and the other is on the run. [New York Times]
