Legal News

H. Rodgin Cohen: Great Name, Better Banking Lawyer

By Peter Lattman

Citigroup posted a huge fourth-quarter net loss and slashed its dividend, hit by $17.4 billion in subprime-related write-downs. Amid the turmoil, the bank has lined up a group of investors who are going to invest $14.5 billion in the company. The group includes the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., Capital Research, Capital World Investors, the Kuwait Investment Authority, the New Jersey Division of Investment, shareholder Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia and former CEO Sanford Weill.

Who does Citi turn to for advice on how to structure such a transaction? H. Rodgin Cohen and a merry band of 12 lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell. Cohen has long been one of the nation’s top banking lawyers, so it’s no surprise to see his name attached not only to Citi’s deal but also to a number of these landmark transactions between strained U.S. banks and so-called sovereign wealth funds.

In an FT profile last year, a Citi executive praised the banking guru. “Rodge is among the most incisive legal minds as it relates to financial institutions,” said Hamid Biglari, a Citi banker. “He has a quiet sense of authority in a boardroom. He speaks infrequently. He is not one to dominate a conversation by holding forth. But when he does speak, everyone listens very carefully.”

Rodge (Harvard ‘65, Harvard Law ‘68) has chaired Sullivan since 2000. He’s an S&C lifer, having joined the firm in 1970 as an associate. Cohen hails from Charleston, West Virginia. Last year in a Law Blog post on the uncanny number of law-firm leaders hailing from the Mountain State, Cohen told us that his pops ran a chain of drug stores, while his mother “ran every philanthropic organization in” Charleston.

In an business famous for hard workers, colleagues say Cohen takes the cake. Donald Toumey, an S&C partner, once told AmLaw he was convinced there are two H. Rodgin Cohens. “They’re twins, obviously,” he said. “And one sleeps one day while the other one works, and then they switch places.”

(Law Blog Web Site Review: Loyal Law Blog readers know about our obsession with law-firm Web sites. Well it appears that S&C recently redesigned its own. We’re finding it unusually slow and user unfriendly. What do you think?)

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 15, 2008 (boomark / email).