NEW YORK, Oct. 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Pomerantz LLP is pleased to announce that on October 1, 2022, it opened its first London office, and that Dr. Daniel Summerfield has joined Pomerantz as Manager of the new office and Business Development Director for the United Kingdom. Jennifer Pafiti, Pomerantz Partner and Head of Client Services as well as a dual qualified U.K. solicitor and U.S. attorney, co-heads the London office with Dr. Summerfield.
Dr. Summerfield was formerly the Head of Corporate Affairs of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), the U.K.’s largest private pension fund, having previously served as USS’s Co-Head of Responsible Investment for many years. Dr. Summerfield brings to Pomerantz a wealth of professional experience, particularly with his strong background in addressing ESG, sustainability and corporate governance issues. Learn more about Dr. Summerfield and what he plans to accomplish in his new role in our Q&A with him in this issue.
“Given Pomerantz’s increasing global footprint, it is only natural for our firm to open an office in London to complement our international offices in Paris and Tel Aviv,” says Managing Partner Jeremy A. Lieberman. “We are delighted to welcome Dr. Summerfield to the team. His decade and a half as the Head of Corporate Governance and Corporate Affairs at USS makes him particularly well suited to advising UK and European funds regarding securities litigation occurring in the United States and in Europe.”
Pomerantz has long had a meaningful presence in the U.K., representing some of the U.K.’s most influential institutional investors and protecting the rights and assets of British shareholders, including the 400,000-plus members of USS, which served as Lead Plaintiff in our historic Petrobras litigation. Ms. Pafiti and Managing Partner Jeremy Lieberman have hosted numerous educational events for institutional investors in London over the years featuring notable guest speakers such as Sir Christopher Hoy, Jeremy Paxman, and Boris Johnson. They will continue this tradition on October 26 at a Pomerantz-hosted investor luncheon in which Ms. Pafiti and Dr. Summerfield will be joined by special guest speaker, the acclaimed journalist and broadcaster, Andrew Neil.
For decades, Pomerantz has led the way in expanding the rights of, and exploring avenues for recovery for, global investors. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd. disrupted decades of legal precedent by barring use of U.S. federal securities laws to recover losses from investments in foreign-traded securities – even where a company dual-lists its stock or sells other securities in the U.S. Investors, including Pomerantz clients, were abruptly left unprotected, with no right of recovery under U.S. law and seemingly no viable recourse in U.S. courts, whenever the exchange on which their damaged shares traded was outside the U.S. borders.
Before the ink on the Morrison decision was dry, Pomerantz attorneys were hard at work developing novel legal theories to overcome the roadblocks it imposed. In the first successful workaround to Morrison, Pomerantz pursued ground-breaking individual lawsuits for institutional investors to recover losses in BP plc’s London-traded common stock and NYSE-traded American Depository Shares (ADSs) arising from the company’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
During the course of the BP litigation, Pomerantz secured ground-breaking rulings that paved the way for 125+ global institutional investors to pursue their claims, marking the first time, post-Morrison, that both U.S. and foreign investors, pursuing foreign claims seeking recovery for losses in a foreign company’s foreign-traded securities, did so in a U.S. court. In the process, the Firm secured the right of investors with U.S. federal law claims concerning BP’s U.S.-traded ADSs to simultaneously pursue English common law claims concerning their London-traded ordinary shares in a U.S. court. In early 2021, after nine years of hard-fought, landmark litigation, Pomerantz resolved lawsuits pursued on behalf of its nearly three dozen institutional investor clients for a confidential, favorable monetary settlement.
Pomerantz’s London office is located in Central Court, in the heart of the legal profession’s Chancery Lane. Formerly the headquarters of the London Patent Office, Central Court boasts a galleried reading room, glass domed roof, and balconied walkways on cast iron columns. Built from 1899–1902, it was designed by Sir John Taylor, whose best known works include the Vestibule and Central Hall with staircase of the National Gallery in London.
Pomerantz LLP, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Tel Aviv, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, Pomerantz pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 85 years later, Pomerantz continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members
