Fannie/Freddie Bailout Pulled in Dozens of Lawyers

Though Treasury’s plan to place Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into a conservatorship was just finalized yesterday, a cadre of lawyers have been hard at work on the deal for weeks. Read the full story here.

A team from Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton was counsel to Morgan Stanley, which advised the Treasury Department on the bailout. Washington partner Ken Bachman led the team, which also included D.C. partners Linda Soldo, Michael Mazzuchi, and Dererk Bush, and New York partners Alan Beller and Seth Grosshandler. Two associates helped as well.

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz advised the Treasury Department on the plan. Leading that team were partners Harold Novikoff and Edward Herlihy. The group also included partners Eric Roth, Steven Rosenblum, Philip Mindlin, Richard Kim, Lawrence Makow, Eric Rosof, and Joshua Holmes, of counsel Elliott Stein, and seven associates. Novikoff says the group of lawyers has spent the past two and a half weeks “just going flat out at this.” Their first duty was to help the Treasury decide whether to go forward with a conservatorship or a receivership, or neither. And they had minimal guidance: “This kind of conservatorship action has really no close analogous precedent,” says Novikoff. His team also worked on the structure of the deal and capital support issues.

Covington & Burling partner David Martin confirms that he was part of a Covington team working as outside counsel to Freddie Mac, though he wouldn’t say who worked with him. Cravath, Swaine & Moore partner Robert Joffe has long been outside counsel to Fannie Mae’s board members. He represented the board in meetings over the weekend about the bailout.