Headquarters | 125 Broad Street New York, NY 10004 United States |
---|---|
No. of offices | 13 total, 9 international |
No. of attorneys | 792 (2015) [1] |
Major practice areas | General practice |
Key people |
|
Revenue | $1.765 billion (2021) [6] |
Date founded | 1879 |
Founder | Algernon Sydney Sullivan William Nelson Cromwell |
Company type | Limited liability partnership |
Website | sullcrom |
Sullivan & Cromwell LLP is an American multinational law firm headquartered in New York City. It is one of the most profitable law firms in the world, with 2021 profits per partner exceeding $6 million [7] and profits per lawyer exceeding $1.3 million. [8]
Founded in 1879 by Algernon Sydney Sullivan and William Nelson Cromwell, Sullivan & Cromwell advised John Pierpont Morgan during the creation of Edison General Electric (1882) and later guided key players in the formation of U.S. Steel (1901). [9] Cromwell developed the concept of a holding company, persuading New Jersey to include it in state law and enabling companies incorporating there to avoid antitrust laws. [10] The firm also worked with less-successful businesses during the volatile decades before the establishment of modern federal bankruptcy laws; it pioneered efforts to reorganize insolvent companies through what became known as the "Cromwell plan." [10] Cromwell was called[ by whom? ] "the physician of Wall Street" for his ability to rescue failing companies. [11] [12]
The post-World War I era saw an expanded need for financing. Sullivan & Cromwell designed many of the equity and debt agreements used during this period, including 94 loan agreements to European borrowers during one seven-year period. [12] The firm's business expanded substantially during the 1930s, when it began to represent companies facing increased regulation and became for a time the world's biggest law firm. [12] During the Great Depression and its aftermath, the firm litigated in the newly emerging fields of shareholder derivatives, antitrust actions, federal income tax law, and registration under the Securities Act of 1933. The firm developed the first major registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933 [13] and influenced the development of tax law in the mutual fund industry. [14]
Sullivan & Cromwell performed the legal work for the Ford Motor Company's $643 million offering in 1956, the biggest ever to that date. Evolving business trends continued to be reflected in the firm's organization; a banking practice was formed in 1968, and a mergers and acquisitions unit was established in 1980, as M&A began to accelerate. By the middle of that decade, the M&A unit generated a third of the firm's revenue. [12]
The firm's international practice dates back to its early years and the development of America's industrial and transportation infrastructure. Sullivan & Cromwell represented European bankers financing the construction of railroads and other elements of the nation's infrastructure. By the turn of the century, Cromwell represented French interests that owned land in Panama and was involved in the financing of the Panama Canal; the firm represents the Panama Canal Authority to this day. [15]
Sullivan & Cromwell was one of the earliest U.S. firms to open overseas offices, [16] beginning with Paris in 1911. By 1928, offices also were open in Buenos Aires and Berlin. In 1935, Allen Dulles, then a partner in the firm and later Director of Central Intelligence, visited Germany and returned somewhat disturbed by the direction of the regime. Over the sole opposition of Allen's brother and fellow partner, John Foster Dulles, the firm's partners voted in 1935 to close the Berlin office and a subsidiary in Frankfurt. However, later the firm backdated the announcement of the closing of their German offices by one year, to 1934. [17] Under Foster Dulles, the firm had helped the regime's arms buildup effort by including the German company I.G. Farben into an international nickel cartel, which included American, Canadian, and French producers. [18]
Two former chairmen of the firm held senior foreign policy positions during the Eisenhower administration: John Foster Dulles, who served as U.S. Secretary of State; and Arthur Dean, who represented the United States in negotiations resulting in the Korean Armistice Agreement. [19]
Sullivan & Cromwell's involvement in the 1954 coup d'état in Guatemala is documented. At the time, the firm represented the United Fruit Company (UFC), which had major holdings in Guatemala. UFC used its lobbying power, through the firm and through other means, to convince President Eisenhower, as well as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and his brother, CIA director Allen Dulles, both alumni of the firm, to depose the democratically elected President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz. [20] [21]
In 2008, police uncovered an insider trading conspiracy involving a former Sullivan & Cromwell attorney; Toronto Dorsey & Whitney partner Gil Cornblum had discovered inside information at both Sullivan & Cromwell and Dorsey and, with his co-conspirator, a former lawyer and Cornblum's law school classmate, was found to have gained over $10 million in illegal profits over a 14-year span. [22] Cornblum committed suicide by jumping from a bridge as he was under investigation and shortly before he was to be arrested but before criminal charges were laid against him, one day before his alleged co-conspirator pleaded guilty. [22] [23] [24]
Sullivan & Cromwell has worked on behalf of tobacco companies. In 2008, the law firm advised on a merger on the tobacco companies Altria and UST. [25]
John Foster Dulles was an American politician, lawyer, and diplomat. A member of the Republican Party, Dulles served as United States Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 until his resignation in 1959 and was briefly a Senator from New York in 1949. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, who advocated an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world.
The United Fruit Company was an American multinational corporation that traded in tropical fruit grown on Latin American plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. The company was formed in 1899 from the merger of the Boston Fruit Company with Minor C. Keith's banana-trading enterprises. It flourished in the early and mid-20th century, and it came to control vast territories and transportation networks in Central America, the Caribbean coast of Colombia and the West Indies. Although it competed with the Standard Fruit Company for dominance in the international banana trade, it maintained a virtual monopoly in certain regions, some of which came to be called banana republics – such as Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala.
Allen Welsh Dulles was an American lawyer who was the first civilian director of central intelligence (DCI), and its longest serving director to date. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he oversaw the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the Lockheed U-2 aircraft program, the Project MKUltra mind control program and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He was fired by John F. Kennedy over the latter fiasco.
Shearman & Sterling LLP is a multinational law firm headquartered in New York City, United States.
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was the result of a CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess. It deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–1954. It installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala.
White & Case LLP is a global white-shoe law firm based in New York City. Founded in 1901, the firm has 46 offices in 31 countries worldwide.
William Nelson Cromwell was an American attorney active in promotion of the Panama Canal and other major ventures especially in cooperation with Philippe Bunau-Varilla.
Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is an American law firm in New York City, considered to be the top firm in the United States for major mergers and acquisitions. While many peer law firms have grown and become international brands, Wachtell has only a single, Manhattan office. It is one of the smallest firms in the AmLaw 100, but has the second highest per partner profits of any law firm and pays significantly above the "Cravath scale" market rate for associates. The firm pays its partners through a lockstep system, meaning that compensation is tied to firm seniority, rather than hours billed or business brought in. The same is true for associate bonuses. This compensation model has led to the firm being called the "last true partnership."
Dorsey & Whitney LLP is an American law firm with over 500 lawyers, and a similar number of staff, located in 21 offices in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. The firm's headquarters is in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it was founded. As of 2023, Dorsey is led by managing partner William R. Stoeri. The firm's lawyers have included several prominent public figures, including former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale.
Overseas Consultants Inc. was formed by the merger of eleven top U.S. engineering and management firms in the 1940s. In one of its first major undertakings, the company conducted a six-month industrial reparations survey of post-World War II Japan in 1947. It ultimately prepared a report for General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur's general view, however, was that Japan had already paid a heavy price, in that the war had totally shattered the Japanese economy, and Japan had lost all of the territories it had occupied in Manchuria, Korea, North China and the outer islands..
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, also known as Hale & Dorr and WilmerHale, is an international law firm with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. It is co-headquartered in Washington, D.C., and Boston. It was formed in 2004 through the merger of the Boston-based firm Hale and Dorr and the Washington-based, firm Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, and employs more than 1,000 attorneys worldwide.
Arthur Hobson Dean was a New York City lawyer and diplomat who was viewed as one of the leading corporate lawyers of his day, as well having served as a key advisor to numerous U.S. presidents.
Frank J. Aquila is an American corporate lawyer. His practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance matters.
Edward G. Miller Jr. was a United States lawyer who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs from 1949 to 1952.
Tip and Trade is a 2011 true crime book by Canadian author Mark Coakley, that depicts an insider trading conspiracy involving Wall Street lawyer Gil Cornblum who had worked at Sullivan & Cromwell and was working at Dorsey & Whitney, and a former lawyer, Stan Grmovsek, who were found to have gained over $10 million in illegal profits over a 14-year span. The crime was detected in 2008. Cornblum committed suicide by jumping from a bridge as he was under investigation and shortly before he was to be arrested but before criminal charges were laid against him, one day before his alleged co-conspirator Grmovsek pled guilty. Grmovsek pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 39 months in prison; this was the longest term ever imposed for insider trading in Canada.
Alfred Jaretzki Jr. (1892–1976) was an American lawyer and an expert on investment companies. Jaretzki helped draft the Investment Company Act of 1940 passed by the United States Congress. He later authored an article in a 1941 issue of Washington University Law Quarterly that details the elements of the law and reasons for its passage. The Investment Act of 1940 created requirements for all U.S. investment companies to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and strengthened their government oversight.
Walter Joseph "Jay" Clayton III is an American attorney who served as the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from May 4, 2017 until December 23, 2020. He was nominated for the position by President Donald Trump.
Monnet, Murnane & Co. was an international investment banking firm founded in 1935 by George Murnane and Jean Monnet. The firm was initially bankrolled by John Foster Dulles, then a prominent Wall Street lawyer with the New York-based law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, whom Monnet had especially close ties to. Dulles, together with William Nelson Cromwell, each contributed $25,000 in the investment banking partnership. Dulles had first met Monnet at the Versailles Peace Conference. Murnane was a legend in the investment banking business, formerly a partner in Lee, Higginson & Co., which collapsed in the Swedish match scandal. Murnane became acquainted with Monnet while at Lee Higginson through Lee Higginson's role with the Kreuger match empire where Monnet was appointed liquidator of the empire on behalf of foreign investors.
Edwin Samuel Cohen was a prominent American tax attorney best known for serving in the Nixon Administration as the Assistant Treasury Secretary for Tax Policy and, later, Under Secretary of the Treasury. In addition to time spent in government service and private practice, he taught tax and corporate law as a tenured professor at his alma mater, the University of Virginia School of Law.
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War is a 2013 book by the New York Times journalist and historian, Stephen Kinzer. It has been described as "a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of “inconvenient” regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men who were once among the most powerful in the world." Kinzer traces how the activity of Dulles brothers "helped set off some of the world's most profound long-term crises." It is based on secondary sources.
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