Tag Archives: Bracewell & Giuliani

Smoldering FIRREA

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Jens Buurgaard Nielsen

American Banker quoted me in Banks Take Losses in MBS Case Appeals; Is Supreme Court Next? (behind a paywall) The story reads, in part,

Banks that sold faulty mortgage-backed securities right before the crisis have suffered a string of legal defeats over the timing of government lawsuits, but some experts believe the industry may still have a shot in the Supreme Court.

Since the crisis regulators have brought a slew of actions against big banks for assets they sold to acquirers that ultimately failed. But in some cases, the parties have tussled over whether the government missed the statutory deadline for bringing a claim.

Appeals courts lately have disagreed with banks that plaintiffs missed court filing deadlines imposed by state law and other regimes, which are stricter than deadlines in federal law. Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled in favor of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in the agency’s case against RBS Securities and other issuers related to the 2009 failure of Guaranty Bank.

Still, other cases are pending and some say banks may be emboldened after the Supreme Court last year favored state-mandated timelines in an environmental case.

“I would expect that [banks] would continue to try to pursue the issue and get relief from the Supreme Court,” said Paul Rugani, a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP based in Seattle.

The government has sought billions from MBS issuers that officials say misrepresented the quality of securities leading up to the crisis. The FDIC and National Credit Union Administration sued companies that had sold assets to institutions that ultimately failed, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency brought claims over securities sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

But many banks have fought the agencies over whether they could bring the suits in the first place. Defendants seemed to gain ground in the lower courts and when the Supreme Court handed down its decision last year in a North Carolina environmental case.

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“The Supreme Court generally does not take a case where there isn’t a split among different circuit appeals courts, and the 5th and 10th circuits are in agreement,” said an attorney familiar with the situation.

But other decisions are still pending. Rulings have yet to come from the 9th circuit as well as a separate case still to be decided in the 2nd circuit. Both involve the FDIC’s extender statute related to MBS losses at the failed Colonial Bank.

“I would think that the parties that lost the case would wait for the 2nd and 9th circuits to decide and then hope that either of them disagrees with the 5th circuit before deciding to take the case up to the Supreme Court,” said Sanford “Sandy” Brown, a partner at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP.

Others said the extender statute in the law at issue in the Supreme Court’s environmental decision – the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act – is different enough from the extender statute in FIRREA that the justices on the high court may want to weigh in.

The 5th circuit decision “is a well-reasoned opinion, but there is no question that such an interpretation could be challenged in an appeal to the Supreme Court,” said David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School. “While circuit courts have had a consistent interpretation of the FIRREA extender statute, there is enough interpretation going on that the Supreme Court could come up with a reasonable alternative to the courts of appeal that have ruled on this issue.”

AG Lynch on Wall Street

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Loretta_Lynch_US_Attorney

Institutional Investor quoted me in Will New Attorney General Loretta Lynch Shake up Wall Street? It opens,

Those unhappy with the lack of personal accountability for the 2008–’09 financial crisis are running out of time to see justice served: In the U.S., the statute of limitations for many bank-related criminal charges is ten years. But the recent appointment of Loretta Lynch as the first black woman to the post of attorney general could present a window of opportunity.

Given mounting public frustration over the failure to punish financial executives who helped push the world to the brink of another Great Depression, Lynch may be well positioned to act where her predecessor, Eric Holder, was unsuccessful. The U.S. Department of Justice has often talked up its efforts to hold individuals responsible for crimes they may have committed, but there hasn’t been much progress. Last year, however, saw an uptick in the size of bank settlements related to the crash, including a $16.65 billion deal with Bank of America Corp. and a $7 billion agreement with Citigroup.

Some industry observers believe Lynch, who turns 56 on Thursday, could use this momentum to target people. “If she does anything differently [than Holder did], she may push her folks to try to make those cases against individuals higher up the corporate ladder,” says Glen Kopp, former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York and a New York–based partner in the white-collar practice at law firm Bracewell & Giuliani.

Lynch’s critics have griped that she may be not be strict enough with Wall Street. They point to her 1980s stint with law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel, which has counted among its clients BofA, Credit Suisse Group and HSBC Holdings, and to a spell early last decade at Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells), where she practiced white -collar criminal defense.

Detractors say both positions, as well as her tenure at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2005, have compromised her ability to prosecute big banks by establishing relationships that she may not wish to jeopardize as attorney general. During Lynch’s lengthy confirmation process, Republicans criticized her for being too soft on HSBC in a 2012 settlement; the British bank agreed to pay $1.92 billion in a money-laundering case after New York and federal authorities decided that criminal charges might bring down the institution.

But many in the legal community believe the more likely outcome will be somewhere in the middle.

“The financial industry will be dealing with an extremely well-informed AG who will seek to balance the competing concerns that arise when investigating and prosecuting large enterprises like those that dominate Wall Street,” says David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School with expertise in property, mortgage lending and consumer financial services matters.