Happy Tuesday, folks! Aaron Weinman here. Today I want to introduce you to Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp. His Rolodex of clients includes Citi, Apollo, and the National Football League. That workload has left him cooked. The job has taken a toll on his psyche, and he's now wrestling with his future.
But the prospect of Paul Weiss without Karp is like the 1990s Chicago Bulls and no Michael Jordan.
Shall we?
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1. Brad Karp has won Paul Weiss dozens of clients from Bloomberg to ViacomCBS. He's responsible for close to 100 relationships and generates around $500 million in fees a year for the law firm.
He's known to champion progressive causes like gun control and racial justice. He's also taken heat for representing Leon Black, the former chief executive at investment giant Apollo Global Management.
An investigation last year revealed Black had paid Jeffrey Epstein $158 million for financial services, a discovery that led to Black's resignation.
While Karp has stopped representing Black, lawyers have subpoenaed the lawyer, seeking evidence related to his work for the former Apollo CEO.
All this — the long hours, maintaining lucrative relationships, and the exposure to Black has left Karp exhausted. And now he's pondering his future.
What comes next for the Paul Weiss rainmaker has been a hot topic of conversation for lawyers close to Karp.
Karp told Insider that if his partners want him to stay, he likely will. But if not, he could leverage some of the fruitful client relationships he's forged in a 38-year career.
New England Patriots' owner, Robert Kraft, counts Karp as one of his top attorneys. Paul Fribourg, CEO of ContiGroup Companies, said his future could be in Washington.
However you slice it, after having developed clients that include some of the biggest financial institutions, it may be hard to separate Karp from Paul Weiss — even if he wanted to.
Check out this profile on one of Wall Street's best-known legal eagles by Insider's Casey Sullivan.
In other news:
2. Private-equity firms are "licking their chops" at the sight of fallen company valuations. Here are 37 tech companies most likely to get snapped up by private investment firms, which are sitting on trillions of dollars in dry powder.
3. James Howells has an $11 million plan to get back some 8,000 bitcoins he accidentally threw away. Here's the quest to find $181 million in digital currency that's buried in a dump.
4. An ex-Goldman Sachs banker tipped his squash buddy on deals, Bloomberg reported. Federal prosecutors alleged that the banker sent messages about planning squash games as a coded way of asking whether his accomplice had bought call options in a company.
5. Atwater Capital has made its second investment in wiip, the entertainment studio behind HBO's "Mare of Easttown." The private-equity firm's investment — Atwater first invested in wiip in 2020 — makes it the second-largest shareholder in wiip after Studio LuluLala.
6. This fintech chief executive shared a unique path to raising a seed round through customers. Karan Kashyap, the CEO of Posh, a conversational artificial intelligence chat program, told Insider how he raised cash without venture capitalists.
7. Goldman Sachs tried to sell about $6 billion in bonds and loans to investors, but it turned into a nightmare, according to this report from the Financial Times. Here's how the buyout of UK supermarket chain Morrisons became the poster child for the excesses of the cheap-money era.
8. Kitchen United raised $100 million in Series C funding. Here's the ghost-kitchen startup's playbook that won over investors including Kroger and Burger King's parent.
9. Twitter has already racked up $33 million in expenses related to Elon Musk's proposed takeover of the company. Those costs are only going to balloon as the social-media company squares off against the billionaire in court.
10. Australia's Flying Kangaroo, Qantas, booked a 13-month-old baby on a different flight to her parents. The Braham family spent 20 hours on the phone trying to rebook. They finally found a flight home, but 12 days after the initial departure.
Street moves:
- JPMorgan has hired Derick Duchodni to lead its technology and disruptive commerce team for the southeast of the country. Duchodni will sit within the middle-market banking and specialized industries business. He joined from HSBC. Ori Miller, an executive director, and Becci Kinsella, a vice president, have also joined the tech and disruptive commerce team in Miami.
- Morgan Stanley has named Katy Huberty its global director of research. Huberty has been with the bank for 22 years and most recently served as the head of equity research for the Americas. Her promotion comes after Simon Bound announced that he will retire from Morgan Stanley at the end of this year.
- Deutsche Bank has named Bruce Evans to lead its investment-banking coverage and advisory for the Americas. Evans will continue his current role as co-head of M&A alongside Berthold Fuerst. Drew Goldman, Deutsche's current head of IBCA for the Americas, will join the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
Curated by Aaron Weinman in New York. Tips? Email [email protected] or tweet @aaronw11. Edited by Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.