Bernstein Litowitz is an undisputed leader in the securities-focused plaintiff arena. Peers on both the same and opposite sides of the “V” offer plaudits and admiration on a near-unanimous basis. “Bernstein does the whole ‘Bernstein,’ thing, which is baseline excellent,” declares a peer, summing up the general consensus. Another contemporary elaborates, “They are one of the few firms in this capacity that files the big, meaty securities cases, and they litigate them hard. They’re not just ‘first-to-filers’ trying to get out as quickly as possible with a weak settlement.” Another peer concurs: “We see Bernstein Litowitz a lot but only in the bigger cases – they are more selective.”
Historically a New York-based institution positioned as “an attack dog for Wall Street,” the firm has also attended to a Delaware practice, a stance that the firm cemented when it recently opened an office in Wilmington and installed Greg Varallo to run it. Varallo, long known to the Delaware Chancery community as a defense lawyer at Wilmington institution Richards Layton & Finger, raised eyebrows and had the legal market talking when he “flipped sides.” “Greg Varallo is pretty amazing, he’s got a big presence in Wilmington,” ventures a peer. A client states, “Greg is a Delaware veteran with deep knowledge of the law and the personalities of Delaware's bench and bar. He is a formidable adversary who litigates with a unique personal style.” Varallo leads a team, which includes New York’s Jeroen van Kwawegen, that continues to litigate appeals related to the historic corporate governance decision on behalf of shareholders, in which the Delaware Court of Chancery nullified Elon Musk’s entire $55 billion compensation package at the request of a Tesla stockholder represented by the Bernstein team. During the trial, Tesla shareholders alleged that they had proved that a number of key milestones in the compensation plan that Musk and the board described in proxy disclosures as very difficult to achieve were, in fact, expected based on Tesla’s confidential projections shared with banks and rating agencies. Shareholders also claimed that the proxy falsely characterized the compensation committee and the board as “independent.” This case, Tornetta v. Musk, is, several claim, the biggest corporate governance case in Delaware in years. “It’s the single biggest talking point in Delaware right now,” opines one fellow Wilmington partner. Another speculates, “The plaintiff bar was very emboldened by the Tornetta case. We’re all waiting to see if it’s going to get reversed or not, but at the moment, that’s for sure Bernstein planting a flag in Delaware and looking to get a big fee.” van Kwawegen is championed by a client for his “legal expertise, communication and accessibility.”
New York’s Hannah Ross is touted by a client for her “consummate legal skills, intuitive approach to client management and excellent client communication.” Ross works with
John Rizio-Hamilton as co-lead counsel in a lawsuit against three underwriter defendants related to $3 billion of public offerings of Viacom stock in March 2021 and the concurrent implosion of family fund Archegos Capital Management. The defendants include certain underwriters of the offerings, namely Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The lawsuit alleges that the underwriters had a severe conflict of interest that arose from total return swap transactions that they entered into with Archegos. Through those transactions, Archegos and numerous defendants amassed an exposure to billions of dollars’ worth of highly leveraged positions in a few companies, including Viacom. When Archegos suffered a liquidity crisis, the underwriters’ conflict of interest caused them to execute massive block sales of their own Viacom holdings at fire-sale prices—all of which was not disclosed to investors. As a result of defendants’ undisclosed conflict of interest, the prices of the Viacom securities—which defendants had just sold to investors—cratered to roughly half the offering prices. After several years of hard-fought litigation, the parties agreed to settle all claims for $120 million. Ross also works with
Salvatore Graziano on an action against Facebook in which shareholders allege that the social media giant’s risk disclosures were misleading because they presented the risk of improper third-party data access and misuse as a hypothetical possibility, even though the company and its executives knew Facebook had recently experienced such an incident on a massive scale in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Defendants also misrepresented that Facebook users could control their personal data on the platform.
