Portfolio
Reed Smith
Creative Sports and
Entertainment v. Brad Gilbert, Bloomberg
As a tennis coach, Brad Gilbert was known for an extremely aggressive style. His talent manager filed a lawsuit against him, alleging that Gilbert was in breach of contract for not paying the agent the stipulated 15% fee for an agreement to coach the rising Scotsman Andy Murray. Gilbert shrugged off the lawsuit, so it took a strong media relations effort to make the case. On the first day of the U.S. Open in August 2006, I contacted the British media to alert them to the fact that Murray’s coach was the subject of a lawsuit. Fortunately, there were no British athletes competing that day, so the sports writers jumped on the story. Three days of high profile negative publicity prompted Gilbert to hire an attorney and begin negotiations with his talent manager.
Andrea Pincus, Time
The complex structures known as credit default swaps were part of the financial engineering that supported the balance sheets of many Wall Street firms. At a time when these instruments began to unravel, I secured an interview for Andrea Pincus with Time magazine. The article was widely read, and led to multiple interviews with other news media, including an appearance on the BBC. Pincus’ legal and business expertise was much in demand as a result of the media coverage.
Michael Bleier, The New York Times & The Wall Street Journal
When he served as General Counsel of Mellon Bank, Michael Bleier led the team when the bank segregated its troubled loans and placed them in a separate, but related entity. As a partner in the Financial Industry Group, his view on the viability of the “good bank, bad bank” approach for struggling investment banks, such as Lehman Brothers, was the focus of interviews with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, American Banker and Bloomberg. After these appeared, Bleier received inquiries from potential clients.