This past year was incredibly successful and rewarding for Hughes Hubbard across the board. Measured by the firm’s most important metric – the results and victories we achieve for our clients – 2024 was remarkable.

Our lawyers won major victories across the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. From strategically important corporate deals to complex bet-the-company litigation and arbitration matters, our culture of collaboration and excellence drove outstanding outcomes for our clients.

Throughout the year, our litigators secured important pre-trial rulings for the Danish tax agency SKAT, the plaintiff in a multidistrict litigation, where it is seeking to recover damages for a multi-billion dollar tax fraud scheme. In the first bellwether trial, which began on Jan. 7, 2025 and lasted five weeks, the firm secured a sweeping victory on behalf of SKAT, with the jury awarding the agency ~$500 million in damages. The victory was reported on by Bloomberg, Law360, Yahoo Finance and International Tax Review. In advance of trial, the firm also achieved significant settlements with two defendants in that first bellwether case.

Our litigators achieved an important win in March when we successfully represented the National Small Business Association in its constitutional challenge to the Corporate Transparency Act in federal court in Alabama. This case gained widespread news coverage, including by Reuters, The American Lawyer, American Banker, The Journal of Accountancy, Reason and Wealth Management.

In May, after 16 months of work by a large team of our corporate restructuring and bankruptcy lawyers representing Gemini Trust Company in the bankruptcy of cryptocurrency lender Genesis Global Capital and related government investigations into Gemini’s Earn program, Gemini returned digital assets worth more than $2.18 billion to over 232,000 Gemini users, representing an overall recovery rate of 232% versus the November 2022 value of the loans Gemini's users had made to Genesis. This garnered widespread media coverage, including by Law360 and CoinDesk.

In August, Chris Kiplok, co-chair of our Corporate Reorganization and Bankruptcy department, served as the court-appointed examiner in the bankruptcy case of New York investment management firm Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April in the Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court with $122 million in debt. This drew media coverage, including by Law360 and Octus.

In September, lawyers in our Paris office advised the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire (also called the Ivory Coast) on drafting and negotiating a €2 billion, 50-year concession agreement for restoration and biodiversity conservation covering an area of 104,000 hectares (about 400 square miles) of the Haut-Sassandra classified forest.

In October, our corporate lawyers helped Sotheby’s close a $1 billion investment round with ADQ, an Abu Dhabi-based investment and holding company, and Patrick Drahi, who acquired Sotheby’s in 2019. The investment received wide media coverage, including by Reuters, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Economy Middle East, Yahoo! Finance, The National, Artnet and ARTnews.

Rounding off the year, in December, our corporate team advised Indian hotel giant OYO on its $525 million acquisition of G6 Hospitality, the parent company of iconic U.S. hospitality brand Motel 6. The deal was reported by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes and AP News.

The breadth of our lawyers’ skills and knowledge across all practice areas and globally is key to our success as a firm and to providing our clients the best counsel and representation. Last year, we expanded our deep bench through both internal promotions of talented lawyers across our offices and lateral hires in key practice areas.

In Paris, we welcomed partner Alex Bafi to our Securities & Capital Markets practice. Alex has extensive experience in U.S. securities, including equity and debt capital markets and high-yield financing, and regularly advises investment banks and corporations on a wide range of complex and innovative offerings.

In Washington, DC, we welcomed Gaela Gehring Flores as partner and co-chair of the firm’s International Arbitration practice. Gaela has acted as counsel in more than 60 international disputes, appearing before international tribunals in some of the most high-profile investment treaty arbitrations as well as before private international commercial tribunals.

Also in Washington, we welcomed Jeremy Paner as partner in the firm’s Sanctions, Export Controls & Anti-Money Laundering practice. Jeremy spent most of his early career as lead sanctions investigator and analyst for the Office of Global Targeting within the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

As 2024 drew to a close, we rang in the new year with a series of well-deserved promotions. The firm elevated to partner Daniel McLaughlin, a member of the Global Investigations, Enforcement and Compliance practice in our Paris office, effective Jan. 1.

At the same time, we promoted four lawyers to counsel: Eleanor Erney in our International Arbitration group; Sean Murphy, Corporate and Finance; Mathieu Rossignol, Global Investigations, Enforcement and Compliance; and Walter Song, Corporate and Equipment Finance.

Once again we were recognized as leading lawyers in Chambers’ 2024 U.S., Global, Europe and Latin America guides. We were highly recommended by Latin Lawyer and named in multiple practice areas throughout Legal 500’s Latin America and U.S. guides. Among other recognitions, our investigations practice retained its spot on Global Investigation Review’s GIR 30 list, a ranking of the best law firms for complex multijurisdictional corporate investigations, and our bankruptcy practice was named to Global Restructuring Review’s GRR 100 list, a ranking of the top law firms for restructuring and insolvency matters around the world.

On behalf of all of us at Hughes Hubbard, I extend my deepest gratitude to our clients, for trusting us with their most important matters, and to our lawyers and business professionals, whose talents, collegiality and commitment to excellence are key to the firm’s success.