Headquarters | 125 Broad Street New York, NY 10004 United States |
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No. of offices | 12 total, 8 international |
No. of attorneys | 792 (2015) |
Major practice areas | General practice |
Key people |
Joseph Shenker, chairman and senior partner H. Rodgin Cohen, senior chairman |
Revenue | $1.13 billion (2015) |
Date founded | 1879 |
Founder | Algernon Sydney Sullivan and William Nelson Cromwell |
Company type | Limited liability partnership |
Website | |
sullcrom |
Sullivan & Cromwell LLP is an international law firm headquartered in New York City. It has gained renown for its business and commercial law practices and its impact on international affairs.
Founded in 1879 by Algernon Sydney Sullivan and William Nelson Cromwell, Sullivan & Cromwell has served many of the world’s foremost industrial, commercial and financial enterprises.
Sullivan & Cromwell’s relationships with leading companies go back to its earliest days. The firm advised John Pierpont Morgan during the creation of Edison General Electric (1882) and later guided key players in the formation of U.S. Steel (1901). The firm was an innovator in corporate organization; Cromwell developed the concept of a holding company, persuading New Jersey to include it in state law and enabling companies incorporating there to avoid antitrust laws.
The firm also worked with less-successful businesses during the volatile decades before the establishment of modern federal bankruptcy laws; it pioneered efforts to reorganize insolvent companies through what became known as the “Cromwell plan.” Cromwell himself was called “the physician of Wall Street” for his ability to rescue failing companies.
The post-World War I era saw an expanded need for financing, both for the decade’s rapidly growing corporations and for governments that had borrowed heavily during the war. Sullivan & Cromwell designed many of the equity and debt agreements used during this period, including 94 loan agreements to European borrowers alone during one seven-year period.
The firm’s business expanded substantially during the 1930s, when it began to represent companies facing increased regulation and became for a time the world’s biggest law firm. During the Great Depression and its aftermath, the firm litigated in the newly emerging fields of shareholder derivatives, antitrust actions, federal income tax law and registration under the Securities Act of 1933. The firm developed the first major registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933 and influenced the development of tax law in the mutual fund industry.