Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

John Hardiman, a partner since 1990, has broad experience in complex litigation, arbitration, and regulatory investigations. He co-heads the firm’s European litigation and arbitration group.

Since moving to London, Mr Hardiman has worked on a series of international arbitrations, including acting as lead arbitration counsel before the ICC in a successful breach of contract action brought by TeliaSonera against Turkish conglomerate Cukurova, relating to TeliaSonera’s efforts to purchase Turkish cellular phone company, Turkcell, for over US$3 billion. He is also handling arbitrations for, among others, MF Global and Alenia Aeronautica. In New York, before coming to London, Mr Hardiman worked on a series of AAA arbitrations for Goldman Sachs & Co.

In addition to his arbitration work, Mr Hardiman has also handled out of the London office United States litigation for, among others, European clients British Petroleum, Philips NV, and Fiat and civil and criminal investigations for Fiat and Akzo Nobel involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Over his career, Mr Hardiman has worked on a wide range of high-stakes contests for corporate control starting with British Petroleum’s purchase of Standard Oil in 1986 and continuing to the recent Barclays/ABN AMRO transaction. Other notable representations include First Union Bank in its successful efforts to acquire Wachovia Bank over the competing bid of Sun Trust; and Dime Savings Bank in its successful defence against the unsolicited
takeover efforts of North Fork Bank. Since moving to London, in addition to Barclays/AMRO, Mr Hardiman has advised on Telewest’s merger with NTL Corp and Endesa’s defence of an unsolicited offer by Gas Natural.

Mr Hardiman also has considerable experience handling regulatory investigations for the firm’s broker-dealer and corporate clients, as well as representing boards of mutual funds, including the independent directors of various funds managed by AllianceBernstein in connection with litigation driven by the ‘late trading’ and ‘market timing’ investigations conducted by the New York Attorney General’s Office beginning in 2003.