Although officially forged in 2024, A&O Shearman is the combined product of two historic international powerhouse legal brands, primarily UK-based Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling, which, from a litigation standpoint, was more US-focused (although it too had a global footprint in other areas.) The firm has been at the forefront of some headline-making litigation on a global basis and is routinely recognized as a leading legal entity by disputes lawyers from such locales as Europe and Southeast Asia. The Shearman & Sterling entity was long touted for its experience and acumen with matters of the securities and white-collar and FCPA enforcement variety and is quickly developing a leading profile in the antitrust space as well.
New York’s Stephen Fishbein, whose practice straddles white-collar crime and enforcement with antitrust elements, secured a victory on behalf of an individual in a significant criminal insider-trading case. In December 2022, the Second Circuit ruled, among other things, that the evidence was insufficient on the two counts on which the client was convicted and dismissed the fraud charges.
Adam Hakki remains a perennial peer favorite, with glowing reviews offered on a unanimous basis. Hakki’s practice is largely focused on, but not limited to, the securities, antitrust and governance fields, with experience in both the criminal and civil capacities. A team led by Hakki (and also involving Agnès Dunogué and
Lyle Roberts) won a significant and complete victory for Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS) in a high-profile and closely watched securities class-action arising from the 2021 collapse of Archegos Capital Management, a family office run by billionaire investor Bill Hwang, who later was indicted for his conduct. (ViacomCBS was one of the companies whose share prices were adversely affected by the liquidation of Archegos.) The litigation claimed that the offering documents for March 2021 securities offerings by ViacomCBS should have disclosed that Archegos had obtained concentrated and leveraged synthetic positions in ViacomCBS stock via total return swaps entered into with investment banks, which also acted as underwriters for the offerings, and that those swaps needed to be liquidated due to Archegos’ financial distress. An April 2024 appellate ruling confirmed an earlier victory (from February 2023) for the Shearman team. Hakki and another peer favorite,
Richard Schwed, achieved an important litigation victory on behalf of Bank of America, who was named as a defendant along with other financial institutions in multidistrict class action alleging an antitrust conspiracy to boycott certain entities that supported electronic trading of interest rate swaps, an important financial instrument. The Shearman team scored in December 2023, when class certification was denied.
Other Shearman partners also increasingly demonstrate antitrust prowess. A frequent teammate of Hakki’s, Jeffrey Resetarits, is generating a good deal of traction in antitrust as well as securities. “Keep your eye on him,” advises a colleague at one of New York’s top firms. “We’ve been seeing more of him lately and we are very impressed. He and Adam Hakki had a nice win [in March 2019] in a matter involving CDOR [Canadian Dollar Offered Rate.]”
Todd Stenerson, based in the DC office, led a team (including DC’s
David Higbee) achieved an April 2024 victory on behalf of Huntington Ingalls Industries and its affiliates in an antitrust class action alleging that the client agreed with dozens of other companies – mostly shipbuilders and contractors for the US Navy and Marine Corps – not to actively solicit each other's naval engineers. One fellow leader in the antitrust space enthuses, “Todd is a very creative and out-of-the-box thinker. He will just generate idea after idea in a very thought-provoking way that benefits all involved.”
A&O Shearman also got a substantial boost in the intellectual property capacity, luring
Elizabeth Holland to its bench from the New York office of Goodwin. Holland has made a name for herself for her trial acuity with patent litigation, specifically in the pharmaceutical and life sciences area.
