Shearman & Sterling

Wall Street origins

Shearman & Sterling was founded in New York City in 1873 by Thomas G. Shearman and John William Sterling, who concentrated on litigation and transactional matters respectively. The young firm represented financier Jay Gould and industrialist Henry Ford, and cultivated a number of important business ties that would evolve into long-standing client relationships, such as with the Rockefeller family and the predecessor banks to Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.

Postwar global expansion

The firm expanded internationally during the post-World War II era, under the direction of Boykin C. Wright, a senior partner who joined the firm from Cahill Gordon & Reindel with a group of lawyers, briefly leading the firm to add his name to the letterhead. The firm's first international office was established in Paris in 1963.

Bolstering the firm's reputation in international law, President Eisenhower tapped partner Fredrick McCurdy Eaton to be the United States' lead negotiator at the 1960 Nuclear Ten Nation Committee on Disarmament, in Geneva. From 1964 to 1975, Mr. Eaton was the senior partner.

In postwar Germany, Shearman & Sterling helped German companies such as Siemens and BASF restructure their debts and re-emerge as credible exporters to the United States. The firm's lawyers assisted Daimler in its listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 1993, the first such listing by a German company, prompting other major companies to follow suit. The firm then represented the German automaker in its purchase and subsequent sale of Chrysler.

The company practices mergers and acquisitions in Germany, and operates one of the largest London offices of a non-UK law firm.

The firm played an important role in the establishment of state-owned oil and gas companies, including Sonatrach in Algeria and throughout the Middle East. In 1979, Shearman & Sterling lawyers represented Citibank during the intense negotiations of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, ensuing after the US government froze all Iranian assets in US banks.

During the 1980s, firm attorneys helped restructure the debts of many Latin American nations in the Brady transactions, and also won mandates in the privatization of numerous state-owned entities. In 2004, the firm launched an office in São Paulo, Brazil and has since represented Brazilian companies in a number of important transactions.

In East Asia, Shearman & Sterling was one of the first firms to grasp the future strategic importance of the Asia-Pacific region, establishing offices in Hong Kong in 1978, followed by Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore and Shanghai. In late 2018, the firm received a license to open an office in Seoul, headed by Singapore partner Anna Chung.

Markus U. Diethelm, former international associate (1989–1992), and current general counsel of UBS AG.

Philippe Dauman, former associate (1978–1987) and partner (1987–1993), and former CEO of Viacom.

Mitch Caplan, former associate (1984–1990) and former CEO of E-Trade.

Dr. Ann Olivarius, former Head of Corporate Practice, Washington, DC (1991-1992), and now Chair of the Executive Committee, McAllister Olivarius.

Controversies

Among Shearman & Sterling's East Asian clients was the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, which (under the control of Jho Low) had wired $368 million from a Swiss bank to the firm's trust account to pay for, among other things, a Beverly Hills hotel, private plane and yacht rentals, and the production of the film The Wolf of Wall Street. Shearman & Sterling was named in a series of civil complaints filed by the DOJ "for having provided a trust account through which hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to Malaysia's 1MDB fund were illicitly siphoned." However, the report added that neither Shearman nor any of its lawyers are accused of wrongdoing.