Sullivan & Cromwell boasts a pedigree as one of the most revered legal brands on the global stage. A towering full-service firm, with concentration on both East and West Coasts through its offices in New York, Washington DC and two offices in California – Palo Alto and Los Angeles. While its offerings extend beyond litigation, Sullivan & Cromwell’s dispute-resolution depth and acuity is called into service by some of the firm’s biggest blue-chip clients. “When people talk about law firms to someone who’s not a lawyer, often they will just randomly throw out ‘Sullivan & Cromwell’ as an example because the name carries that much weight, like Coca-Cola or Apple,” marvels one peer. “We should all be so lucky.” Speaking to the firm’s A-list client base, another peer quips, “Goldman Sachs has them on speed-dial. S&C has that premium work on lockdown.”
Supporting this assertion, Sullivan & Cromwell scored a win for this client in August 2023 when the Second Circuit Appeals Court reversed the certification of a class of Goldman Sachs shareholders in a case
dating back to the 2008 financial crisis and alleged conflicts of interest in Goldman Sachs investment vehicles relating to subprime mortgages. Plaintiffs claimed that those alleged conflicts contradicted generic statements made by Goldman Sachs about its corporate principles and conflicts management procedures, which had supposedly inflated the price of Goldman Sachs stock.
Robert Giuffra, a mainstay of the New York office, provided lead counsel. “Bob Giuffra is high-energy and fast, but savvy” observes a peer. “He knows when to try a case and he also knows how and when to pull back. I’ve seen judges get stunned by his courtroom abilities – like, who has this much stamina? So, you almost get thrown off guard when you see how measured and reasonable he is. Maybe it’s a tactic – if so, it works.” Giuffra also
represented Tenaris SA, a manufacturer of steel pipe, in resolving multi-year investigations by the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission. They concluded in June 2022 when the DoJ closed its investigation without taking action, and the company settled with the SEC by agreeing to pay a reduced penalty of $78 million without admitting or denying wrongdoing. Giuffra also continues to represent Volkswagen in a suit brought by the SEC in March 2019, three years after Volkswagen entered into its landmark multibillion-dollar settlements in the US. Sharon Nelles acts with Giuffra on the Volkswagen representation and is another multifaceted brand-name New York partner. “Sharon is pretty universally loved, and for good reason,” states one appreciative peer. “Great personality, no ego. Although her demeanor is almost the opposite of Bob Giuffra – she seems so relaxed and easygoing that I think it takes people off guard when they see how ready for the fight she is.”
Richard Pepperman is another New York partner with a varied practice who also regularly handles Goldman work. In one recent case, the plaintiff, a participant in Goldman Sachs’s 401(k) plan, on behalf of himself and other similarly situated individuals, alleged that Goldman Sachs breached its fiduciary duties and engaged in impermissible prohibited transactions under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act by offering Goldman’s own proprietary mutual funds in its 401(k) plan, which the plaintiff claimed both performed worse and were more expensive than non-Goldman alternatives. In September 2022, summary judgment was granted in Goldman Sachs’s favor on each claim.
Sullivan & Cromwell has been making strides in other areas as well. Its bankruptcy capacity benefited from the additional horsepower provided by
James Bromley, who joined the firm four years ago and had a lead role in the unprecedented sprawling and cross-border Nortel bankruptcy a decade earlier. Bromley and future star Jacob Croke provide lead counsel to the 102 chapter 11 debtors of embattled crypto hedge fund FTX in matters relating to its sudden implosion and November 2022 bankruptcy filing, including conducting a comprehensive internal investigation and responding to multiple global investigations. New York future star
Dustin Guzior acts with Steve Holley for Bayer on issues related to Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto, which created one the largest agricultural input suppliers in the world. To secure merger clearance for the acquisition, the DoJ required Bayer to divest certain assets. In 2018, therefore, Bayer sold seed and herbicide assets for €5.9 billion and its global vegetable seeds business, certain seed treatments and digital farming activities for up to €1.7 billion to BASF, who then filed a request for arbitration in 2019, seeking indemnification under the asset purchase agreements, arguing that certain cost items, including personnel costs, had not been appropriately disclosed and allocated to some of the divested businesses. During the two-week, in-person hearing held in Frankfurt in November 2021, Bayer showed that it had provided adequate information on the cost structure of those assets. The Sullivan & Cromwell pair scored a favorable judgment from the ICC in August 2022. Guzior is also acting with intellectual property star Garrard Beeney in representation of Columbia University in securing a unanimous verdict in its favor in a two-week patent infringement jury trial against NortonLifeLock in the Eastern District of Virginia. Beeney also acts with Marc DeLeeuw, who makes the leap from future star to litigation star in this edition, in representing Ocado Group. The pair secured a December 2021 trial win before the Chief Administrative Law Judge of the International Trade Commission in a patent dispute with its competitor, AutoStore. In March 2022, the Commission unanimously affirmed Ocado's victory at trial and terminated the investigation in its entirety. In June 2022, Ocado scored another win against AutoStore, convincing a panel of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to invalidate three of four claims of AutoStore’s patent that was at issue in the earlier ITC investigation.
