Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom

A corporate legal services dynamo, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom is synonymous with high-end corporate and transactional work and the litigation and/or investigation and enforcement that often inevitably follows or accompanies it. With 22 offices globally, the firm is entrenched in every major financial center in the world. Within the US, the firm comes up particularly strong for its work in New York, Washington, DC, and in the Delaware Chancery Court. Peers regard the firm as an unquestioned leader; “Skadden is still the firm that inevitably comes up in dinner conversation and at any cocktail party as the yardstick against which other firms measure themselves,” confesses a peer.
     In his nearly 40-year career, New York’s Shepard Goldfein has been a major player in sports litigation. He has won many cases on behalf of the National Football League, including one in which he defended the League against claims brought by athletes and team owners opposing its employment rules and public ownership policy, respectively. Goldfein also leads the firm’s antitrust and global competition practice, and in this arena, he is representing China Minmetals in an ongoing antitrust class-action litigation seeking to force the case into arbitration and for allegedly fixing the price of the commodity magnesite. “Shep Goldfein is quite a character and widely admired but more importantly, he is a great antitrust practitioner, one of the best I’ve witnessed,” confirms a peer. In the firm’s famed securities capacity, the team of Jay Kasner and Scott Musoff, both of whom are routinely namechecked by peers as standouts in the capacity, appear as part of a team representing UBS, who is being sued regarding more than $2.1 billion in losses that investors who bought mortgage-backed securities incurred after the collapse of the US housing market. The plaintiffs allege that UBS acquired thousands of residential mortgage loans, many of which were of questionable quality and which in turn were conveyed to a group of trusts, who then issued them as securities for sale to investors. Plaintiffs claim that UBS failed to fulfill its contractual obligation to repurchase the defective loans. Peer review is also robust for white-collar/enforcement/investigations practitioner Lawrence Spiegel. “Larry Spiegel is one of the best, very intelligent and crafts skillful negotiation strategies.” David Zornow made news in April 2015, when he was tapped to represent controversial CDO manager Lynn Tilton and her private equity firm, Patriarch Partners, who have been accused by the SEC of misleading investors and raking in $200 million in ill-gotten gains.
     The DC office is the second-largest domestically, with more than 300 attorneys. Colleen Mahoney enjoys a nationwide reputation for her white-collar criminal defense practice. The head of the firm’s securities enforcement and compliance practice, she comes to her practice with several high-level federal government roles, including as the SEC’s acting general counsel, under her belt. John Beisner, the head of the firm’s mass torts, insurance, and consumer litigation group, is commended by peers as “The dean of the defense bar in class actions and other areas,” adding, “he’s terrific as a person and has been on the leading edge of major issues in the industry and often speaks at conferences and panels in the area.” Recently Beisner has handled matters on behalf of industry leaders like Pfizer and Merck. For the former, Beisner defended the company in class actions concerning Neurontin before district and appellate courts. In the Merck case, Beisner led an action challenging the Kentucky Attorney General’s use of private counsel in a preceding case against Merck relating to the promotion of the drug Vioxx, facilitating the agreement of a favorable settlement in the original case. Steven Sunshine represented Actavis under the scrutiny of the FTC in a Supreme Court case related to agreements between brand and generic companies and specifically marketing arrangements concerning the testosterone replacement therapy AndroGel.  Sunshine is an expert in the industry with respect to the utilization of reverse payments under the Hatch-Waxman Act as well as related antitrust issues. A peer also advises, “You should take a look at Jennifer Spaziano. I had her on a case once and she’s quite good.” Spaziano represents CSC and certain of its officers in a securities fraud class action pending in the Eastern District of Virginia and in related derivative litigation pending in Virginia and Nevada. The complaint alleges that defendants made false or misleading statements between August 2008 and August 2011 about the effectiveness of CSC’s internal controls, and its progress and prospects on a multi-year, multibillion-dollar contract to provide an electronic patient records system to the UK National Health Service. The class action was settled in May 2013.
     In the firm’s Wilmington office, Anthony Clark and Thomas Allingham, two of the firm’s often-mentioned standouts, triumphed on behalf of the Trump Group in litigation that spans multiple courts in Delaware and New York, concerning ongoing efforts to gain 100% ownership of the Trans-Resources entity. Allingham also represented MacAndrews & Forbes in its acquisition of all of the 57% of M&F Worldwide that it did not own, a proposal that sparked hard fought shareholder litigation Court of Chancery and the New York Supreme Court. After the merger closed, Skadden successfully moved for summary judgment on plaintiffs’ post-closing damages claims. Edward Welch successfully represented Gilead Sciences in shareholder litigation in Delaware and New Jersey state court in connection with claims of breach of fiduciary duty and failure to disclose concerning the client’s $11 billion acquisition of Pharmasset. Welch also represented Amerigroup in shareholder litigation in connection with the $4.6 billion acquisition of the client by WellPoint. After two months of expedited proceedings leading up to a scheduled preliminary injunction hearing, counsel for the parties reached an agreement in principle to settle the action on the eve of briefing on the preliminary injunction motion. The court approved the settlement and dismissed the action with prejudice.