A pedestrian passes a set of labels listing the occupants in the building that houses the offices of Cambridge Analytica in London on March 20, 2018. Privacy watchdogs from the U.K. and European Union are plotting their next steps in the wake of a scandal involving the data analytics company, which is accused of harvesting Facebook user profiles in its work for Donald Trump's presidential campaign. (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg)Schulte Roth Bags Cambridge Analytica Bankruptcy Work
SCL USA Inc., the parent company of embattled political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, filed for Chapter 7 protection Thursday in New York.
May 18, 2018 at 03:03 PM
3 minute read
Cambridge Analytica LLC has filed for bankruptcy in New York, two months after a data sharing scandal involving the political consultancy and social media giant Facebook Inc. began making headlines.
SCL USA Inc., the New York-based parent company of Cambridge Analytica, filed for Chapter 7 dissolution late Thursday. Adam Harris, chair of the business reorganization group at Schulte Roth & Zabel in New York, has grabbed the lead role advising Cambridge Analytica and SCL in Bankruptcy Court.
Schulte Roth said in court papers that it had received $30,000 from Emerdata Ltd., a London-based data company formed by executives of SCL, in order to proceed with the dissolution of the debtors. Cambridge Analytica and U.K. parent company SCL Elections Ltd. had announced earlier this month a plan to wind down their businesses in U.S. Bankruptcy Court and administration proceedings in the U.K. British accounting firm Crowe Clark Whitehill, an affiliate of Crowe Horwath International, is handling U.K. insolvency work for Cambridge Analytica.
Neither SCL nor Cambridge Analytica have filed a detailed list of their largest unsecured creditors with the Bankruptcy Court in downtown Manhattan. A creditor matrix filed in the Chapter 7 case for both entities includes Greenberg Traurig, Washington; D.C.'s Grossberg, Yochelson, Fox & Beyda; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy; and White & Case. Sean Richardson, a former corporate associate at Milbank, serves as head of legal at Cambridge Analytica in New York. The company has been hit with a wave of litigation following revelations that it accessed Facebook user information ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Greenberg Traurig recently parted ways with Rudolph Giuliani as a result of controversial comments the former New York City mayor has made in his defense of President Donald Trump. Giuliani, who first took a leave of absence from the firm last month, had seen his previous firm, the former Bracewell & Giuliani, advise Cambridge Analytica on its obligations under U.S. campaign law, according to an April report by Politico.
Squire Patton Boggs and British firm Gunnercooke have also previously done work for Cambridge Analytica, which struggled to cope with revelations that it improperly obtained the data of 87 million Facebook users starting in 2014. Facebook, which has turned to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher for outside counsel in the fallout from those disclosures, could also find itself drawn into the Chapter 7 case filed by SCL and Cambridge Analytica, according to a report earlier this month by sibling publication the New York Law Journal.
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