Shearman & Sterling
 Shearman & Sterling(Law firm)   | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Successor | A&O Shearman |
| Formation | 1873 |
| Founder | • John William Sterling • Thomas G. Shearman |
| Extinction | 30 April 2024 |
| Headquarters | New York City, United States |
| Membership | • Markus Diethelm • Philippe Dauman • Mitch Caplan • Ann Olivarius • Bob Woodruff • Nina Zagat • Tim Bezbatchenko • Melody Barnes •  Laurens Jan Brinkhorst• Raymond J. Dearie • James Donato • Joseph A. Doyle • William Francis Kuntz • John McCarthy • Jeffrey A. Meyer • Caroline Mulroney • Clark T. Randt Jr • Charles W. Mooney Jr • Robert Mundheim •  Stephan Harbarth• Fredrick McCurdy Eaton • Boykin C. Wright • William Lee • Michael Forrestall |
| US corporate law firm | |
Shearman & Sterling LLP was a multinational law firm headquartered in New York City, United States.
Contents
History
Wall Street origins
Shearman & Sterling was founded in New York City in 1873 by Thomas G. Shearman and John William Sterling, who concentrated on litigation and transactional matters respectively. The young firm represented financier Jay Gould and industrialist Henry Ford, and cultivated a number of important business ties that would evolve into long-standing client relationships, such as with the Rockefeller family and the predecessor banks to Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.[1]
Postwar global expansion
The firm expanded internationally during the post-World War II era, under the direction of Boykin C. Wright. The firm's first international office was established in Paris in 1963.[2]
President Eisenhower tapped partner Fredrick McCurdy Eaton to be the United States' lead negotiator at the 1960 Nuclear Ten Nation Committee on Disarmament,[3] in Geneva. From 1964 to 1975, Eaton was the senior partner.
In postwar Germany, Shearman & Sterling helped German companies such as Siemens and BASF restructure their debts and re-emerge as credible exporters to the United States. The firm's lawyers assisted Daimler in its listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 1993, the first such listing by a German company, prompting other major companies to follow suit.[4] The firm then represented the German automaker in its purchase and subsequent sale of Chrysler.[5] The company practices mergers and acquisitions in Germany, and operates one of the largest London offices of a non-UK law firm.[6]
The firm played an important role in the establishment of state-owned oil and gas companies, including Sonatrach in Algeria and throughout the Middle East. In 1979, Shearman & Sterling lawyers represented Citibank during the intense negotiations that ensued during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, after the US government froze all Iranian assets in US banks.[7]
During the 1980s, firm attorneys "helped" restructure the debts of many Latin American nations in the Brady transactions, and also won mandates in the privatization of numerous state-owned entities. In 2004, the firm launched an office in São Paulo, Brazil and has since represented Brazilian companies in a number of important transactions.[8]
In East Asia, Shearman & Sterling was one of the first firms to grasp the future strategic importance of the Asia-Pacific region, establishing offices in Hong Kong in 1978, followed by Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore and Shanghai.[9] In late 2018, the firm received a license to open an office in Seoul, headed by Singapore partner Anna Chung.[10]
The firm was pro bono counsel to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, helping the prosecution side.[11]
On May 21, 2023, it was announced that Shearman & Sterling had agreed to terms in a merger with UK Magic Circle member Allen & Overy, creating a megafirm estimated to have over 4,000 attorneys across 49 offices. The combined firm became known as A&O Shearman.[12]
Helping avoiding US anti-money laundering rules
Among Shearman & Sterling's East Asian clients is the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, which (under the control of Jho Low) had wired $368 million from a Swiss bank to the firm's trust account to pay for, among other things, a Beverly Hills hotel, private plane and yacht rentals, and the production of the film The Wolf of Wall Street. Shearman & Sterling was named in a series of civil complaints filed by the DOJ "for having provided a trust account through which hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to Malaysia’s 1MDB fund were illicitly siphoned." This was not illegal for Shearman & Sterling.[13][14]
CIA cover
In January 1995, French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua summoned U.S. Ambassador [[Pamela Harriman] to complain about American spying against France, demanding that several CIA spies leave the country. One of these was William Lee, a 57-year-old Harvard-educated corporate lawyer who had been six years with the State Department, before spending 20 years in Paris with Shearman & Sterling, and finally at Kroll Associates. The government of France charged that he was a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency, being part of the covert CIA campaign to destabilize French corporate interests.[15]
In 1993, Lee had challenged the merger of two big French companies, the arms maker Matra and the publishing giant Hachette. The suit argued that the December 1992 merger had cheated Matra shareholders because it had not taken into account a secret contract worth roughly $1.5 billion, signed the previous month, to sell Matra missiles to Taiwan. What made Lee's lawsuit so explosive, all sides agree, was a September 1994 letter his lead plaintiff sent to the president of Taiwan, with copies to then-Prime Minister Edouard Balladur and other French officials. The letter warned that the lawsuit could disclose commission payments that had been made by Matra and other French companies on arms sales to Taiwan, and the kickback of some of those payments to French politicians.[15]
Notable clients and cases
- CVS Health in its $69 billion acquisition of health insurance company Aetna[16]
- Electronic Arts in connection with a $1 billion investment grade senior notes public offering[17]
- WebMD in its $2.8 billion sale to Internet Brands, a portfolio company of KKR[18]
- Salesforce in its $2.8 billion acquisition of cloud-based e-commerce platform Demandware[19]
- The Republic of Lithuania as Respondent in an ICSID arbitration brought by Veolia[20]
- Dow Chemical Company in its $4.6 billion split off of the Dow Chlorine Products Business and the related debt-for-debt exchange[21]
- Credit Suisse in class action lawsuits alleging price fixing of the “spreads” for initial public offerings[22]
- General Electric in its $32 billion acquisition of Baker Hughes and combination with GE Oil & Gas to form a new publicly traded company[23]
- JPMorgan Chase as lead arranger for €5.45 billion financings for Pirelli[24]
- Qatar Investment Authority in its investment in Manhattan West, a development site valued upon completion at up to $8.6 billion[25]
- Sony, as part of a consortium, in the $4.5 billion acquisition of Nortel's patents portfolio[26]
- Boston Scientific in the $1.5 billion sale of its Neurovascular Business to Stryker Corporation[27]
- Bank of America in connection with a $3.1 billion sale and repurchase agreement financing transaction related to Amgen's $10.5 billion purchase of Onyx Pharmaceuticals[28]
- John Deere on the restructuring of its foreign operations[29]
- David Karp, the founder and CEO of tumblr, with his employment, retention and tax arrangements in tumblr's $1.1 billion sale to Yahoo![30]
- Synthes in its $21.3 billion acquisition by Johnson & Johnson[31]
Notable alumni
- Markus U. Diethelm, former international associate (1989–1992), and current general counsel of UBS AG.
- Philippe Dauman, former associate (1978–1987) and partner (1987–1993), and former CEO of Viacom.
- Mitch Caplan, former associate (1984–1990) and former CEO of E-Trade.
- Dr. Ann Olivarius, former Head of Corporate Practice, Washington, DC (1991-1992), and now Chair of the Executive Committee, McAllister Olivarius.
- Bob Woodruff, former associate and ABC News journalist.
- Nina Zagat, co-founder and co-chair of the Zagat Survey, was associated with the firm from 1966-1990.
- Tim Bezbatchenko, current general manager of Toronto FC of Major League Soccer.
- Melody Barnes, former associate and former senior domestic policy adviser to former President Barack Obama.
- Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Dutch politician, minister and member of the European Parliament.
- Raymond J. Dearie, former associate (1969–1971), Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
- James Donato, former partner (2009–2014), Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
- Joseph A. Doyle, former associate (1947–1956) and partner (1956–1979), Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) in the Carter Administration.
- William Francis Kuntz, former associate (1978–1986), Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
- John McCarthy, former associate (1966–1967), and former Australian ambassador to various countries including Vietnam, Mexico, the United States and Japan.
- Jeffrey A. Meyer, former associate, Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.
- Caroline Mulroney, former associate and former Attorney General of Ontario.
- Clark T. Randt, Jr., formerly Shearman & Sterling's China Managing Partner, served as U.S. Ambassador to China from 2001-2009.===
- Charles ("Chuck") W. Mooney Jr., the Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Professor of Law, and former interim Dean, at the University of Pennsylvania Law School
- Robert Mundheim (born 1933), attorney, law professor, and Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School
- Michael Forrestall spook.[32]
Known members
2 of the 24 of the members already have pages here:
| Member | Description |
|---|---|
| Laurens Jan Brinkhorst | Dutch politician & lawyer who attended the 1970 and 1974 Bilderbergs |
| Stephan Harbarth | President of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany with an itch to censor independent media. Previously corporate lawyer/lobbyist and politician. |
References
- ↑ Hoffman, Paul (1982). Lions of the Eighties: The Inside Story of the Powerhouse Law Firms. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-17405-5.
- ↑ https://www.shearman.com/regions/europe
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/05/obituaries/fredrick-eaton-a-lawyer-is-dead.html
- ↑ Miriam Wildman, 'Daimler's NYSE Listing Piques German Interest,' New York Times November 19, 1994.
- ↑ http://digital.shearman.com/i/544598-firm-brochure-2017/7?
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20080322103556/http://www.thelawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=129772
- ↑ Bruce van Voorst et al., 'Iran Hostages: How the Bankers Did it,' Time Magazine, February 2, 1981.
- ↑ https://www.shearman.com/news-and-events/news/2015/09/return-of-jonathan-kellner-to-sao-paulo-office
- ↑ https://www.shearman.com/regions/asia%7Cwebsite=Shearman & Sterling
- ↑ https://www.law.com/international/2018/12/03/shearman-sterling-receives-license-for-seoul-office/
- ↑ https://www.aoshearman.com/en/insights/shearman-and-sterling-history-videos-making-history-and-reflections
- ↑ https://www.ft.com/content/38ef46af-7fda-4b49-ac3a-d86e76e42f96
- ↑ https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/us-treasury-urged-close-glaring-lawyer-loophole-used-45-billion-wolf-wall-street-corruption-scandal/
- ↑ https://www.legalbusinessonline.com/news/shearman-named-us-complaints-related-1mdb-report/72860
- ↑ a b https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/01/08/the-french-the-cia-and-the-man-who-sued-too-much/d81e2a2b-96e7-4a75-8680-1a76b24c9f36/
- ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/cvs-to-buy-aetna-for-69-billion-1512325099
- ↑ https://www.shearman.com/news-and-events/news/2016/02/electronic-arts-on-offering-of-senior-notes
- ↑ https://www.businessinsider.com/webmd-kkr-deal-buyout-2017-7
- ↑ http://digital.shearman.com/i/849400-brochure-fintech-updated/4?
- ↑ https://www.law360.com/articles/768040/shearman-to-rep-lithuania-in-110m-veolia-arbitration-case
- ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/dow-chemical-to-split-off-chlorine-business-in-5-billion-deal-1427454861
- ↑ https://www.shearman.com/people/s/schwed-richard-f?section=experienc
- ↑ {https://www.thestreet.com/story/13872900/1/ge-baker-hughes-confirm-oil-and-gas-merger.htm
- ↑ https://legalcommunity.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/FinanceReport2018_LcSrl2.pdf
- ↑ https://hotelexecutive.com/author/1565/John-Opar
- ↑ https://www.lexpert.ca/article/tech-consortium-acquires-nortel-patents-for-us45b/
- ↑ https://www.irglobal.com/article/shearman-sterling-represents-boston-scientific-corporation-177
- ↑ https://www.kinneyrecruiting.com/new-york/legal-news/11581-shearman-a-sterling-advises-on-amgen-incs-105-billion-purchase-of-onyx-pharmaceuticals/
- ↑ https://www.shearman.com/practices/tax?section=experience
- ↑ http://digital.shearman.com/i/235092-media-and-entertainment-brochure/9?
- ↑ https://www.law360.com/articles/331794/j-j-s-21b-synthes-buy-gets-eu-nod-after-divestiture
- ↑ https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP82M00311R000100430002-3.pdf
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