Litigator in the Spotlight
In the first securities class action trial over shareholder losses in the financial meltdown, Labaton Sucharow’s Mark Arisohn convinced a federal district court jury in Miami that BankAtlantic Bancorp had misled shareholders about the risks of its loan portfolio. Representing plaintiff State-Boston Retirement System, Arisohn pointed to internal e-mails in which bank officials worried about credit problems while seemingly downplaying the risks publicly. On November 18 jurors awarded $2.41 for every BankAtlantic share sold over six months in 2007. BankAtlantic has said it will move to set the verdict aside.
Dealmakers in the Spotlight
For Joseph Gromacki, the past two years have been a wild ride. The Jenner & Block corporate practice chair guided General Motors Company from a 363 sale in bankruptcy court in 2009 to the company’s whopping $23 billion initial public offering in November. But then Gromacki has been through a lot with the automaker. His relationship with GM goes back to the 1990s, when he was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis. Gromacki advised GM on its $28 billion split-off of Electronic Data Systems in 1996, the $27 billion restructuring of GM’s Hughes Electronics Corporation unit a year later, and the $1.7 billion IPO for former GM auto parts maker Delphi Automotive. Given that history, Gromacki says, “it’s quite meaningful to me to be involved in GM’s return to the public markets.”
