I Smell Bacon!

Last week, Jed Rakoff, a District Court Judge in the Southern District of New York, refused to approve a settlement between the SEC and Bank of America. Rakoff was widely praised for taking a principled stand against shoddy disclosure and the SEC's tacit approval of same.

But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to make the case that Jed Rakoff is the Kevin Bacon of the securities bar. Before Rakoff was a judge he was a federal prosecutor, and eventually, the Chief of Business Fraud for the US Attorney's Office, SDNY. He succeeded John R. Wing who would become Peter Madoff's lawyer (his boss at the SDNY was future Whitewater Indepedent Counsel Robert Fiske). Upon leaving the US Attorney's Office in 1980 he became a partner at Mudge Rose (Richard Nixon's law firm). Among his clients was Kidder Peabody M&A specialist-turned-government-informer Martin Siegel. Siegel testified against Ivan Boesky who was defended by short-lived SEC chair Harvey Pitt. In 1990, Rakoff left Mudge Rose and joined Pitt's firm, Fried Frank. In 1995, when President Clinton appointed him to be a District Court Judge (replacing David Edelstein who heard some of the Kidder Peabody civil suits, 686 F Supp 413, 752 F Supp 624) he completed the triangle - he'd been a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and now a judge.

If you know me, you are only two degrees away from Rakoff - he taught a class on Federal Criminal Law I took in law school (I got a C) and I used to work at Fried Frank, too.

Is it a small world, or is it just me?