Glenn Agre Bergman & Fuentes was featured in 9fin, which profiled the firm’s growing Structured Financial Products Litigation team and the opportunities its attorneys see across the asset-based finance market. The article highlights the recent arrival of partner Christopher Johnson, who joined the firm from McKool Smith.
The team also includes co-founder Trevor Welch, partners Zachary Mazin and Skye Tian Gao, and special counsel Monika Bileris and Ayana Rivers. For Chris and Zach, joining Glenn Agre is a reunion with the firm’s founders and many of its attorneys, colleagues they worked alongside for years at a previous firm.
“One of the chief reasons I wanted to come here is the opportunity to rejoin colleagues I have known for literally 20 years,” Chris told 9fin. “Glenn Agre was a perfect fit… from a practice standpoint… we know how each other works, we know how we like to approach cases together.”
The firm’s Structured Financial Products Litigation complements our established strengths in restructuring and bankruptcy, complex commercial litigation, and accounting malpractice — practices that are increasingly called upon together as high-profile financial collapses generate multi-front litigation across courts and counterparties.
Chris, Zach, and Skye, who were interviewed for this article, see the conditions for the next wave of structured finance disputes taking shape. As 9fin reports, federal regulators have moved to reduce oversight of the financial industry. Recent steps include SEC proposals to end mandatory quarterly reporting and to preempt state Blue Sky laws, and guidance exempting certain data center securitizations from some regulations. These moves come as asset-based finance issuance is rising.
The Glenn Agre team draws a parallel to the mid-2000s, when relaxed underwriting standards fueled the residential mortgage-backed securities market ahead of the financial crisis. They expect that competition for deals will again erode underwriting discipline and leave investors seeking recovery.
Market participants point to tighter underwriting and stronger credit enhancement than in prior cycles. Zach argues, “It’s not necessarily a function of ‘are the standards rigorous or are they lenient’? It’s a question of whether individual human beings are willing to skirt them or not, and when that snowball starts rolling down the hill, and external market forces compel you to live on the margins when demand is super high…do you start papering over things that might have otherwise given you pause?”
And the team is ready to pursue these claims on behalf of defrauded investors. Zach put it plainly: “We want to be adverse to Wall Street banks. We know how to be adverse to those banks — we know who their lawyers typically are, we know how they litigate, and they know that we’re serious and that we can take them on.”
Read more about the team’s growth and its outlook on the structured finance litigation landscape in the full 9fin article.