Legal News

Judge in Lehman Bankruptcy: A Dealmaker, Not a Fighter

By Dan Slater

Four years in the Senate may or may not be sufficient experience for the United States presidency. But three years as a United States bankruptcy judge qualifies James M. Peck to oversee the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Click here for a WSJ profile of Judge Peck by Dionne Searcey and Chad Bray.

The 63 year-old Peck (Dartmouth, NYU law) began his career at Duane Morris before moving to Schulte Roth in 1990, where he co-chaired the firm’s business-reorganization department. He was appointed to the federal bankruptcy bench in 2006.

Two weekends ago Judge Peck, presiding over a courtroom scrum, approved the sale of Lehman’s U.S. brokerage-and-investment firm to Barclays. But that was perhaps the easy part. There’s still $613 billion in debt, not to mention questions over why Lehman moved as much as $8 billion from its European headquarters in London to New York shortly before the bankruptcy filing. (Lehman executives have said the firm typically collects money from its global units and then disperses it every day.)

Howard Sharfstein — a former Dartmouth classmate and a partner at Judge Peck’s former firm — told the WSJ that he’s never seen Judge Peck rattled. “He knows how this impacts so many lives of real people,” says Sharfstein. As an attorney, Judge Peck had a reputation as a deal maker, not a fighter, said Stephen Selbst, partner at Herrick, Feinstein.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 29, 2008 (boomark / email).