Financial Services
Over the past three decades, our law firm has represented almost every type of financial services professional in the whole range of employment situations and problems which arise in the different sectors of today’s financial services industry. Our executive compensation attorneys have represented commercial and investment bankers, brokers, advisors, traders, private equity and hedge fund managers — some of whom are employed by the world’s largest financial firms and some by private companies or investment businesses.
As a result, our executive compensation attorneys are intimately familiar with the structure of offer letters and employment agreements for financial professionals, including issues of bonuses; the vesting of share-related incentive compensation; “garden leave” and more stringent non-competition and non-solicitation restrictions. Our attorneys understand issues of confidentiality peculiar to the financial services industry and required regulatory disclosures regarding termination of employment for certain licensed professionals (U-4’s).
Whatever your level of seniority or compensation in the demanding financial services sector, and whether you are taking a new job or leaving an old one, our attorneys’ knowledge and experience can help you maximize your opportunities.
Media, Entertainment, and Marketing
Over the years, our executive compensation law firm has been retained by industry executives, creators, producers, writers, designers, performers and managers to handle negotiations and disputes involving virtually every aspect of the entertainment, media, advertising and marketing industries, including book and magazine publishing, advertising, theatre, film, talent agencies, photography, broadcasting and internet marketing and development companies. These legal representations have sensitized us to the particular problems and challenges of these businesses.
In addition to negotiating both contracts and employment separations of senior executives ranging from editors of international bestsellers to managers of major consumer websites, our executive compensation attorneys have represented such significant creators as the pioneering executive behind Mad Men, the authors of Dirty Dancing, Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, Menopause the Musical and Shear Madness, the Tony award-winning producer of Death of a Salesman, Long Day’s Journey Into Night and I Am My Own Wife on Broadway, the dancer/choreographer Peter Gennaro, the business manager of Michael Bennett, classical violinists and high-end art photographers.
If you are in any way involved in these creative and very public industries, our attorneys can enhance your employment situation by drawing upon our knowledge and experience in this sector.
Recent Representative Client Matters
We recently helped a growing technology company terminate a senior executive (and part owner) by preemptively commencing litigation for breach of the executive’s confidentiality obligations, then steering the matter into a mediation which resulted in a prompt buy-out of the executive’s position. This matter mirrored a case, several years ago, in which we represented an executive in the reverse situation and favorably settled his entitlements through mediation after we had commenced litigation.
George Birnbaum recently represented a senior executive in the negotiation of a substantial consulting agreement which had to be finely tuned, both to the particular industry and also to preserve the non-exclusive nature of the consultancy relationship. Among other points, we were able to persuade the company hiring our client that the company’s standard requirement that every consultant must obtain an extensive (and expensive) insurance package was largely unnecessary due to the nature of the particular services our client was to render.
Our lawyers recently assisted a literary agent in setting up his own agency while being careful not to violate any of the ongoing restrictions in his former employment agreement. We were successful in helping him take his own clients with him while remaining so faithful to the specifics of his pre-existing obligations that his former employer, after a few threatening letters, decided against litigation.
When a terminated executive files for unemployment compensation, the employer, even if the executive has been terminated “for cause,” often finds it too much of an uphill battle to object. In a recent matter, however, we suspected that if our client, a publishing business, failed to object to unemployment compensation for an executive who had been terminated for cause, that failure later might come back to haunt the company in a baseless disability discrimination claim by the executive. Accordingly, Lisa Horowitz succeeded, in an administrative trial before a hearing officer, in having the executive denied unemployment compensation on the grounds that the executive had been terminated “for cause” as a result of serious financial self-dealing. This determination was subsequently upheld at two appellate levels, and should prove to be an important defense for the company in any subsequent litigation claiming that the executive’s termination was the purported result of some disability.