Round and around the revolving door does spin…
Lifted from comments from open thread July 23 by reader Jack
Round and around the revolving door does spin. Those who take the ride are guaranteed to win, in the game of securities enforcement law. In yet another move between public and private practice John Khuzami moves from the SEC to “….a job that pays more than $5 million a year at Kirkland & Ellis, one of the nation’s biggest corporate law firms. In doing so, he is following the quintessential Washington script: an influential government insider becoming a paid advocate for industries he once policed.” NY Times, July 23, 2013. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/a-legal-bane-of-wall-street-switches-sides/?hpw Quote: “We started out knowing that everybody and anybody wanted him,” said Mark Filip, who leads Kirkland’s government and regulatory defense group.” Mr. Khuzami’s skills were so sought after that “…Visa and Bridgewater, the giant hedge fund, were among the companies that approached Mr. Khuzami for in-house counsel jobs. The fervor grew so great that Fox Business declared it the “biggest bidding war on Wall Street.” So what were his accomplishments while in government service? All the NY Times article could point to was a conviction of a “terrorist” and “The job paved the way for him to join the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, where he ran a securities task force.” “Mr. Khuzami drew praise for creating units to track complex corners of Wall Street and applying prosecutorial tactics to civil cases. Under Mr. Khuzami, the enforcement division logged a record number of actions, including a case against Goldman Sachs.” There is nothing in the article describing any enforcement of securities laws and nothing regarding any record of convictions. Lots of info about all the good he has done, and likely will do, for the banking and securities firms he’ll represent.
Like Daddy always said, “Honey, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Never truer than today.
it appears to me that it is not a matter of who one knows, but more a matter of who it is that knows what your point of view is likely to be from studying the results of your past accomplishments. That does not necessarily mean a record of very positive accomplishments. It’s end result that counts. Look, the DA in Florida appears to have pursued Zimmerman to the courtroom. Accomplishment? One more killer on the lose in spite of the prosecution. It’s not the pursuit that counts. It’s the effort to obtain a conviction result.
That’s what seems to be missing from Mr. Khuzami’s resume, the number of banksters convicted in the wake of the biggest banking scandal of the century. What did he do to deserve the accolades? Or did he get the new job with Kirkland because of the results that he may have been clever enough not to have gotten in spite of a reputation for being a tough regulator. Tough? Who’s afraid of tough? Bankers are more concerned with intention rather than impressions.