Cahill Gordon & Reindel
Encyclopedia
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
-based international law firm
Law firm
A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. The primary service rendered by a law firm is to advise clients about their legal rights and responsibilities, and to represent clients in civil or criminal cases, business transactions, and other...
with offices in New York, Washington, D.C. and London. According to The American Lawyer, Cahill is consistently among the most profitable law firms in the world.http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2011/02/al100cahill2011.htmlhttp://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2011/04/al100growth.html
History
Cahill opened its doors at 120 Broadway in 1919 as a small firm that quickly built a national reputation in the financial and corporate areas. By the end of the DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, it had expanded to handle bankruptcies, reorganizations, and regulatory matters. During and after the Second World War, under the leadership of John T. Cahill
John T. Cahill
John T. Cahill lawyer and prosecutor . Cahill served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and was the lead prosecutor in the trial of former United States Circuit Judge Martin T. Manton, which led to Manton's conviction. Cahill was the son of a New York City Police Officer who...
, former United States Attorney
United States Attorney
United States Attorneys represent the United States federal government in United States district court and United States court of appeals. There are 93 U.S. Attorneys stationed throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands...
for the Southern District of New York, the firm grew dramatically. As Cahill Gordon Reindel & Ohl, it moved to 80 Pine Street, where it remains. Partner John Ohl, a tax specialist, retired in 1976 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00EEDA1331F930A25752C0A962958260. The firm established its Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
office in 1928, though it closed in 2000 when the firm opened its London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
http://www.thelawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102955 office. Today, Cahill maintains offices in London and Washington D.C., though by far its largest office is in New York City. Renowned for its corporate finance practice and work in high stakes lawsuits, Cahill remains a successful law firm with approximately 300 attorneys.
Prominent litigation work
Cahill's litigation practice is one of the more prominent in the United States, handling high-profile securities, antitrust and first amendment litigation. The firm's partners have made frequent appearances before the United States Supreme Court. For instance, National Broadcasting Co. v. United States helped establish the power and authority of the Federal Communications CommissionFederal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
. Another case, Times-Picayune v. United States, is among the Court's most important antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...
rulings.
On behalf of Cahill, Floyd Abrams
Floyd Abrams
Floyd Abrams is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law, and many arguments in the briefs he has written before the United States Supreme Court have been adopted as United States Constitutional interpretative law as it relates to the First Amendment...
successfully defended The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
in the landmark New York Times Co. v. United States
New York Times Co. v. United States
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 , was a United States Supreme Court per curiam decision. The ruling made it possible for the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censure.President Richard Nixon had...
case. In that 1971 case the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
refused to permit the Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
Administration to stop the publication of thousands of pages of Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
-related government documents. Thereafter, Abrams and Cahill became prominent defenders of the media and First Amendment rights. On September 9, 2009, Abrams argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of Senator Mitch McConnell in the highly publicized re-argument ordered by the Court on the constitutionality of McCain-Feingold, defending the rights of corporations and unions to donate unlimited amounts of money to political allies in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, , was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment prohibits government from censoring political broadcasts in candidate elections when those broadcasts are funded by corporations or unions...
. Cahill attorneys have appeared before the Supreme Court on behalf of the press in numerous cases of national importance.
In late 2005, David N. Kelley
David N. Kelley
David N. Kelley is an American attorney and a former United States Attorney and Deputy U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He was also a co-chair of the United States Justice Department’s nationwide investigation into the September 11 attacks.Kelley, who served as chief of the...
joined the firm as a senior litigator, having retired as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Under his leadership, successful convictions for securities violations were obtained against Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart is an American business magnate, author, magazine publisher, and television personality. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she has gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing publishing, broadcasting, and merchandising...
, Bernie Ebbers in the collapse of MCI Worldcom, and John Rigas for his role at Adelphia.
Prominent corporate work
Cahill's corporate practice has assisted in the development of numerous financial products and services. This firm is prominent in the US capital markets, the Euromarket and bank lending market, often advising the investment and commercial banks in their roles as underwriters, initial purchasers, arrangers, agents and dealer managers. It was Cahill that represented the financing sources in many of Wall StreetWall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
's historic buyouts, beginning with the leveraged buyout
Leveraged buyout
A leveraged buyout occurs when an investor, typically financial sponsor, acquires a controlling interest in a company's equity and where a significant percentage of the purchase price is financed through leverage...
of RJR Nabisco
RJR Nabisco
RJR Nabisco, Inc., was an American conglomerate formed in 1985 by the merger of Nabisco Brands and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. RJR Nabisco was purchased in 1988 by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co...
in 1989, up through the mega-buyouts of TXU
TXU
Energy Future Holdings Corporation is an electric utility company headquartered in Energy Plaza in Downtown Dallas, Texas, United States. The company was known as TXU until its $45 billion leveraged buyout by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs...
, Hospital Corporation of America
Hospital Corporation of America
Hospital Corporation of America is the largest private operator of health care facilities in the world, It is based in Nashville, Tennessee and is widely considered to be the single largest factor in making that city a hotspot for healthcare enterprise.-History:The founders of HCA include Jack C....
, Kinder Morgan
Kinder Morgan
Kinder Morgan, Inc. is an American energy company. It is also, through a subsidiary, the general partner of and owner of many of the interests in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, a publicly traded pipeline and terminal limited partnership....
, Harrah’s, Alltel
Alltel
Alltel Corporation is a wireless service provider, primarily based in the United States. Before an acquisition by Verizon Wireless, it served 34 states. After the merger, Alltel continues to serve six states, mostly in rural areas...
, First Data
First Data
First Data Corporation is an American payment processing company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. First Data is a provider of electronic commerce and payment solutions...
and Clear Channel
Clear channel
A clear-channel station is an AM band Radio station in North America that has the highest protection from interference from other stations, particularly concerning night-time skywave propagation. Usually known as class A stations since 1982, they are occasionally still referred to by their former...
in the 2006 and 2007 LBO boom, where the largest buyout records were set.
Cahill is also active in the equity markets, especially as underwriter's counsel. They advised the underwriters in the IPO of hospital-operator HCA Holdings, which is reported to be the largest ever private equity-backed IPO on a US exchange http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/10/us-hca-ipo-debut-idUSTRE72949H20110310 and represented JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and the other underwriters in the IPO of media measurement group Nielsen Company, which raised $1.6 billion.
Described by Hoovers as “a name plenty of high-profile clients have banked on,” Cahill advises banking stalwarts Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
, Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch is the wealth management division of Bank of America. With over 15,000 financial advisors and $2.2 trillion in client assets it is the world's largest brokerage. Formerly known as Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., prior to 2009 the firm was publicly owned and traded on the New York...
, Barclays, Citigroup
Citigroup
Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Citigroup was formed from one of the world's largest mergers in history by combining the banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate...
, Credit Suisse
Credit Suisse
The Credit Suisse Group AG is a Swiss multinational financial services company headquartered in Zurich, with more than 250 branches in Switzerland and operations in more than 50 countries.-History:...
, Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG is a global financial service company with its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. It employs more than 100,000 people in over 70 countries, and has a large presence in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific and the emerging markets...
, JPMorgan, UBS, and Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational diversified financial services company with operations around the world. Wells Fargo is the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by assets and the largest bank by market capitalization. Wells Fargo is the second largest bank in deposits, home...
as underwriters in debt and equity offerings, including IPOs, and as arrangers in leveraged loans. Bloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately held financial software, media, and data company. Bloomberg makes up one third of the $16 billion global financial data market with estimated revenue of $6.9 billion. Bloomberg L.P...
and Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters Corporation is a provider of information for the world's businesses and professionals and is created by the Thomson Corporation's purchase of Reuters Group on 17 April 2008. Thomson Reuters is headquartered at 3 Times Square, New York City, USA...
consistently rank Cahill as the number one legal advisor to U.S. and Euromarket high yield bond underwriters in their legal league tables, and rank the firm among the most active law firms representing underwriters in other debt and equity categories. Reuters Loan Pricing Corp. ranks Cahill among the leading law firms representing bank lenders in the U.S. leveraged loan market.
Offices
- New YorkNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
(Financial DistrictFinancial District, ManhattanThe Financial District of New York City is a neighborhood on the southernmost section of the borough of Manhattan which comprises the offices and headquarters of many of the city's major financial institutions, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York...
) - LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
- Washington, DC
See also
- Floyd AbramsFloyd AbramsFloyd Abrams is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law, and many arguments in the briefs he has written before the United States Supreme Court have been adopted as United States Constitutional interpretative law as it relates to the First Amendment...
- List of prominent cases argued by Floyd Abrams
- Citizens United v. Federal Election CommissionCitizens United v. Federal Election CommissionCitizens United v. Federal Election Commission, , was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment prohibits government from censoring political broadcasts in candidate elections when those broadcasts are funded by corporations or unions...
- David N. KelleyDavid N. KelleyDavid N. Kelley is an American attorney and a former United States Attorney and Deputy U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He was also a co-chair of the United States Justice Department’s nationwide investigation into the September 11 attacks.Kelley, who served as chief of the...
- Thomson Financial League Tables