NEW YORK, NY – March 19, 2009 – LawFuel.com Legal Announcements – Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, LLP announced today that derivatives and structured products legal expert Daniel Cunningham will be joining the firm’s New York office. Cunningham comes to the firm from Allen & Overy where he has been the senior partner of the New York office since 2001. He is expected to play a pivotal role in the expansion of the firm’s complex financial product and bankruptcy litigation practices.
Cunningham, has been called “a renowned guru in the derivatives field” by the legal publication Chambers USA. Since 1984, he has participated in the preparation by the ISDA Documentation Committee of standard documentation for derivatives transactions, including the 1987, 1992 and 2002 ISDA Master Agreements, the 1991 ISDA Definitions, the User’s Guide to the 1992 Master Agreements, the 1994 Credit Support Annex (New York Law), the Credit Swap Confirmation, and the 1998 FX and Currency Option Definitions. He has also participated in developing legal positions for ISDA in 35 jurisdictions worldwide.
Quinn Emanuel’s Managing Partner John Quinn said: “Daniel’s addition to our firm does not signal that we are abandoning our litigation only model. A very significant part of our practice is litigation involving complex, derivatives, swaps and other structured financial products. There are probably less than 5 lawyers in the world who have the expertise Daniel has in these areas.” Peter Calamari, head of the firm’s financial products litigation group, added: “Daniel’s deep understanding of these extremely complicated deals will be an immense benefit to our firm and the firm’s clients.”
Over the years Cunningham has also handled numerous headline financial transactions and has substantial cross border M&A and business reorganization experience. Susheel Kirpalani, head of the firm’s restructuring group, said: “Daniel is a leading U.S. capital markets lawyer. With more than 30 years of experience, he has been involved in all types of capital markets transactions. That type of experience will be invaluable to our bankruptcy group.”
Before joining Allen & Overy, Daniel was a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore where he had served as both managing partner and head of the firm’s London office. Cunningham graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude in 1975 where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and thereafter clerked for Judge James Browning on the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.
Quinn Emanuel is a 400+ lawyer business litigation firm — the largest in the world devoted solely to business litigation — with offices in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, London and Tokyo. Firm lawyers have tried over 1290 cases, winning over 90% percent of them. When representing defendants, our trial experience gets us better settlements or defense verdicts. When representing plaintiffs, our lawyers have won over $10 billion in judgments and settlements. We are the only firm in the United States that has won four nine-figure jury verdicts in the last seven years. We have also obtained four nine-figure and two ten-figure settlements in the same period.
Further information about the firm is available at www.quinnemanuel.com.
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