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 美国系列：一个印度裔美国人－－7000亿美元救助资金的掌门人 |
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美国系列：一个印度裔美国人－－7000亿美元救助资金的掌门人 -- 游客 - (3520 Byte) 2008-10-09 周四, 16:31 (3463 reads) |
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作者：游客 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
A Wall Street Lawyer Navigates Tempestuous Times
2008年10月10日
When Wachovia Corp. ditched its merger deal with Citigroup Inc. for a rival bid from Wells Fargo & Co. last week -- a moved that stunned Wall Street -- attorney H. Rodgin 'Rodge' Cohen was in the middle of the action.
With virtually all of Wall Street as his client, the 64-year-old chairman of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell has solidified his role as one of the most influential private-sector players in the financial crisis. Over the past five weeks alone, Mr. Cohen and his team have advised Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Wachovia, Barclays PLC, American International Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in a blitz of mergers, rescues and cash infusions.
Mr. Cohen comfortably straddles different realms. He harbors fascination for both obscure banking regulations and pop star Sheryl Crow. And he can summon his folksy West Virginia roots when quietly lecturing Wall Street's titans. Colleagues say this has served him well in his role as intermediary between the clashing worlds of Wall Street and Washington.
'I don't think you can replace judgment and experience and he has both in great quantities,' says J.P. Morgan Chief Executive James Dimon. Mr. Cohen recently advised the bank on its $1.9 billion purchase of Washington Mutual Inc.'s banking business from the U.S. government. Just months earlier, Mr. Cohen was across the table from Mr. Dimon representing Bear Stearns Cos. in its sale to J.P. Morgan.
Mr. Cohen is also in demand because he helped mold the financial system that is now under assault. He helped draft the rules that led to the emergence of powerful national banks, waged the first hostile bank takeover in the U.S. and lobbied, in the early 1990s, to expand the Federal Reserve's power to provide the emergency loans now being employed by the government.
But Mr. Cohen's immersion in the banking system also has at times put him in a difficult position. As he jumps from one client to the next, it is sometimes hard to tell whom he may be representing at a given moment.
In mid-September, Mr. Cohen represented Wachovia in its preliminary merger talks with Morgan Stanley. Several days later, after those talks faltered, he advised Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group as it negotiated a 21% stake in Morgan Stanley.
Mr. Cohen was counseling Lehman Brothers until it sought bankruptcy protection Sept. 15, and then pivoted to represent Barclays, which ended up buying the failed investment bank's U.S. operations. Late last month, as banks and private-equity firms rushed to examine WaMu's books, Mr. Cohen had to choose between four clients that wanted to hire him before settling on J.P. Morgan.
'Sometimes you just have to pass' on assignments, he says. Mr. Cohen says that most of his clients have 'extraordinary understanding of the circumstances.'
Indeed, he says the current crisis differed from his past experiences in a fundamental way: 'This is all coming at once.'
The recent troubles -- which Mr. Cohen describes as his 'five weeks in hell' -- started when his phone rang around 11 a.m. Sept. 5. Fannie Mae needed Mr. Cohen in Washington for emergency meetings about its future with government officials including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Within days, Mr. Cohen had helped broker the deal that put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship.
Though he says he didn't realize it at the time, the resolution of that crisis was only the beginning. Over the next month, he faced the collapse of Lehman, the bailout of AIG, Goldman's conversion to a commercial bank, the failure and subsequent sale of WaMu and the continuing contest for Wachovia.
Sitting this week in his cluttered 30th-floor office overlooking New York Harbor, Mr. Cohen doesn't hesitate when asked to identify the lowest point of the crisis: Lehman's bankruptcy-protection filing. On Sept. 14, Mr. Cohen stood with Lehman President Herbert H. 'Bart' McDade in the hallway outside a conference room at the New York Fed's bastion in downtown Manhattan. That afternoon, officials emerged with news that the government wouldn't rescue Lehman.
Mr. Cohen, who days earlier had shepherded Lehman through negotiations with two potential saviors, was crestfallen. 'To an extent you feel you have failed,' Mr. Cohen said.
It was at marathon meetings, with top bankers and government officials, that Mr. Cohen warned of the dangers of a Lehman failure. The fallout wouldn't occur 'because of things you knew and failed to understand,' he cautioned attendees. 'You can't know everything, and you can't foresee everything,' he said. Indeed, since Lehman's bankruptcy filing, the financial crisis has spun further out of control, causing a nearly complete seizure of the credit markets and stock-market drops around the world.
Adding to Mr. Cohen's workload is Wachovia, the Charlotte, N.C., bank that has been one of his prized clients since he worked on the 1981 purchase of North Carolina's First National Bank of Catawba County for Wachovia's predecessor, First Union. On Oct. 2, Mr. Cohen learned Wells Fargo was launching a competing bid for Wachovia. Just four days earlier, the bank had agreed, under federal pressure, to sell most of itself to Citigroup for about $2 billion.
After earlier passing on a deal, Wells' sudden re-emergence -- a move that Mr. Cohen says surprised him -- forced Wachovia to make a difficult choice. The bank had signed a contract with Citigroup, agreeing not to negotiate with any other parties for a week.
Accepting the Wells offer would arguably force Wachovia to violate the agreement. A lawsuit filed in federal court by Citigroup cites a phone call placed by Mr. Cohen and Wachovia CEO Robert Steel to inform Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit around 3 a.m. on Oct. 3 that they had cut a new deal. Citigroup cites that call as evidence of 'a direct violation of Citigroup's contractual rights.'
But Mr. Cohen advised Wachovia's directors that their duty to shareholders superseded the agreement with Citigroup, according to a person familiar with the matter. The directors heeded his advice.
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Henry Rodgin Cohen
Age: 64
Roots: Raised in Charleston, W.Va., the son of a drugstore-chain owner.
Graduated: Deerfield Academy, Harvard University, Harvard Law
Cut His Teeth: In the rescue of Franklin National Bank in 1974 and the federal bailout of Continental Illinois in 1984.
Other Rescue Work: Helped unfreeze Iranian banking assets in 1980, leading to the release of American hostages held in Iran.
Matthew Karnitschnig / David Enrich
金融危机中的第三号人物
上周， Wachovia Corp.抛弃与花旗集团(Citigroup)达成的合并交易、转向富国银行(Wells Fargo & Co.)另签协议的时候，整个华尔街都为之震惊。而律师H·罗金·科恩(H.Rodgin Cohen)就是参与这一事件的人士之一。
几乎整个华尔街都是他的客户，而这位Sullivan & Cromwell律师事务所64岁的董事长在眼下这场危机中也巩固了自己作为股权投资领域最具影响力人士的地位。仅在过去五个星期，科恩和他的团队就为涉及房利美(Fannie Mae)、雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers Holdings)、 Wachovia, 巴克莱(Barclays PLC)、美国国际集团(American International Group)、摩根大通(J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.)和高盛(Goldman Sachs Group)的一连串并购、救助和注资活动提供了咨询服务。
科恩能在不同领域间轻松转换。他既精通复杂的银行业监管规定，对流行歌星雪儿·克罗(Sheryl Crow)也非常痴迷。当科恩平静地给华尔街巨头们做演讲时，你能感受到他身上来自西弗吉尼亚故乡的乡土味。同事们说，这对他在华尔街和华盛顿之间发生冲突时扮演协调人的角色大有帮助。
摩根大通首席执行长戴蒙(James Dimon)说：我想判断力和经验是很难替代的，而科恩在这两方面都非常出色。科恩最近为摩根大通斥资19亿美元从美国政府手里接管Washington Mutual Inc.(WaMu)的银行业务提供了咨询服务。就在几个月前，在摩根大通收购贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns )的交易中，作为贝尔斯登代表的科恩还与戴蒙是谈判对手。
人们需要科恩，还因为他参与构建了眼下正受到冲击的这套金融体系。他曾参加相关规定的起草（那些规定催生了全国性超大银行）、发起美国首例银行业敌意收购案，九十年代初还参与了要求扩大Fed提供紧急贷款之权的游说活动（眼下这一权力正在运用）。
但科恩对银行系统涉足过深有时也会让他面临尴尬处境。当他从一个客户跳到下一个客户的时候，有时很难说清在某个特定时刻他究竟是代表着谁。
9 月中旬，在Wachovia与摩根士丹利并购交易的谈判初期，他代表Wachovia。仅仅几天后，这起谈判失败，他随即又在日本三菱UFJ金融集团 (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group)收购摩根士丹利21%股份的交易中成了这家日本公司的代表。
科恩在雷曼兄弟9月15日申请破产保护前一直向后者提供咨询服务，而后来雷曼兄弟的美国业务被巴克莱收购时，他又成了巴克莱的代表。上月底，当多家银行和股权投资公司赶着审查WaMu帐目的时候，科恩不得不在四家要求他出任代表的客户中挑选一个，最后选定了摩根大通。
他说，有时你不得不放弃掉一些业务。他说，自己的客户大都对这种情况“非常理解”。
不过他也说，目前这场危机跟他以前经历过的那些有根本性不同，这次是大家一下子都出了事。
科恩将最近这段糟糕日子形容为“地狱般的五个星期”。它是从9月5日上午11点左右接到的一个电话开始的。房利美希望科恩到华盛顿参加一个关系到其未来命运的紧急会议，参加会议的还包括Fed主席贝南克(Ben Bernanke)和财长鲍尔森(Henry Paulson)等政府官员。几天之内，科恩帮助达成了将房利美和房地美(Freddie)送交政府托管的交易。
那场危机的平息还只是个开始而已，虽然他说当时自己并没有意识到这一点。在接下来的一个月中，他经历了雷曼兄弟崩溃、AIG获得政府救助、高盛转型为商业银行、WaMu倒闭接着又被出售，还有对Wachovia的持续争夺。
科恩位于30层楼上、可以俯瞰纽约港的办公室里一片混乱。当被问及他认为此次危机的低谷是在什么时候，他毫不犹豫地说是雷曼兄弟的破产保护申请。9月14 日，在曼哈顿下城区纽约联邦储备银行大楼里，科恩与雷曼兄弟总裁迈克戴德(Herbert H. McDade)站在一间会议室外的走廊里。那个下午，官员们出来宣布消息说政府不会出手救助雷曼兄弟。
几天前还帮助雷曼兄弟与两家潜在买家进行谈判的科恩失望之极。他说，在某种程度上，你觉得是你自己失败了。
在高级银行家和政府官员参加的马拉松式的会议上，科恩警告说雷曼兄弟可能面临倒闭的危险。他提醒与会者说，如果就你们知其然而不知其所以然的情况，或许不会产生什么后果；但你无法了解一切、预测一切。确实，自雷曼兄弟申请破产以来，金融危机已经进一步失控，导致信贷市场几乎完全瘫痪，全球股市纷纷下挫。
而Wachovia 在科恩肩上再添一重担。1981年他曾参与为Wachovia的前身First Union收购北卡罗来纳州First National Bank of Catawba County，此后该行一直是科恩最重视的客户之一。10月2日，科恩得知富国银行正在发起一场对Wachovia的争夺战。仅仅四天前，该行已经在联邦政府的施压下同意作价约20亿美元将旗下大部分业务出售给花旗。
富国银行此前曾放弃了一项交易，这次再次突然出现，照科恩的说法他是大吃一惊，Wachovia也不得不作出一项艰难的抉择。该行已经与花旗签订了协议，同意在一周内不与其他方进行谈判。
接受富国银行的提议势必会迫使Wachovia违约。花旗向联邦法院提交的一项诉讼中称，10月3日凌晨3点左右，科恩和Wachovia首席执行长斯蒂尔 (Robert Steel)打电话通知花旗首席执行长潘伟迪(Vikram Pandit)说，他们已经达成了一项新的交易。花旗称这通电话是“直接侵犯花旗合约权利”的证据。
不过据知情人士透露，科恩劝告Wachovia董事们说，他们对股东的责任要超过与花旗的协议。董事们听从了他的忠告。
科恩简历
姓名：H·罗金·科恩
年龄：64岁
家庭背景：在西弗吉尼亚州查尔斯顿长大，父亲是连锁杂货店老板。
教育背景：毕业于迪尔费德中学(Deerfield Academy)、哈佛大学法学院
入行：参与1974年救援Franklin National Bank、1984年联邦政府对Continental Illinois的救助。
其他救助工作：参与1980年解冻伊朗银行业资产，进而使得在伊朗的被劫美国人质获释。
Matthew Karnitschnig / David Enrich
作者：游客 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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