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"[Hands] thought he could turn this company around where nobody else could. The problem with turning this company around is that nobody buys records."
——Citigroup lead attorney Ted Wells

GUY’S FATE NOW IN JURY’S HANDS

Battling Barristers Boies and Wells Adopt Identical Tacks in Their Final Arguments
Opposing attorneys David Boies and Ted Wells both urged jurors to use their “common sense” in their closing arguments before they began deliberating about whether Terra Firma boss Guy Hands or Citigroup banker David Wormsley has told the truth about what led Hands to grossly overpay for EMI in 2007. The outcome of this high-stakes courtroom drama is imminent after nearly three weeks of conflicting testimony by the two former close friends and longtime colleagues.

Boies told jurors that it “doesn’t make common sense” that Wormsley did not know Cerberus had dropped out because documents show that the Citi banker was kept informed of the process in his capacity as an adviser to EMI.

In what the U.K.’s Telegraph described as “an assured performance” spanning two-and-a-half hours (i.e., as long as a Bruce Springsteen concert), Boies said that Citi had been hungry to generate fees from the sale of EMI, and that Wormsley had used his close relationship with Hands to do that. The attorney pointed out a disputed call from Wormsley to Hands just hours before the auction was pivotal because Wormsley convinced Hands that he had to maintain his bid price to get EMI. "The midnight call was so important. In the absence of that, Terra Firma would not have put in a bid," Boies said. “If they hadn’t believed Cerberus was bidding, if they didn’t believe there was an active auction, why would they have gone ahead and submitted a bid? There wouldn't have been a point to bidding."

Wells, too, implored the eight jurors to “Use your common sense,” pointing out there was no written record that Wormsley had told Hands that Cerberus was going to bid. “This is corporate America. Someone would have written it down. The reason it’s not written down is because the conversation never happened.”

In an emotive style that contrasted sharply with the more methodical approach of Boies, Citi’s lawyer told the jurors that Hands only brought the lawsuit because he wanted to shift blame for the ill-fated decision to buy EMI.

"We're in this courtroom because Guy Hands back in 2007 made a bad business decision," Wells argued. "He thought he could turn this company around where nobody else could. The problem with turning this company around is that nobody buys records. Nobody's figured out how to make money with these record companies because everything's being downloaded. He's lost hundreds of millions of dollars. He's made a mistake. Why doesn't he take responsibility for the fact he made a mistake."

Wells acknowledged that Citi had made a bad business decision of its own in loaning Terra 2.6 billion pounds ($4.1 billion) for the EMI acquisition. He said it had written down $2 billion. "We have got to live with our bad business decision and so does he," he said, gesturing in Hands’ direction. "But there was no lie."

Boies and Wells’ wrap-ups followed Judge Jed Rakoff’s characteristically no-bullshit directive to both sides near the end of Monday’s session. “Get real,” he said. “The question in this case, after all you lawyers have worked it over, is going to be whether they believe Guy Hands or David Wormsley.”

The remaining eight jurors (the ninth was dismissed Tuesday; see story) considered the case for about half an hour before heading home for the night.

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