Silicon Valley Bank’s Former Top Lawyer Moves Into Consulting

Michael Zuckert, the former legal chief for Silicon Valley Bank’s parent company, has started his own consultancy “advising companies in the innovation industry,” he said.

Zuckert, who at SVB was based in New York, has resigned from First Citizens BancShares Inc. and started Gramercy Park North Consulting.

“This has been a difficult period for everyone,” Zuckert said in an email. “I’m proud of the team I had the privilege of working with in SVB Legal.”

Zuckert spent a decade as the top in-house lawyer for SVB, which was part of Santa Clara, Calif.-based SVB Financial Group until the former was seized in March by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. SVB Financial filed for bankruptcy, while its former commercial banking unit’s FDIC receivership concluded a month ago with SVB’s sale to First Citizens.

SVB Financial disclosed in a mid-March securities filing that Zuckert was no longer its top lawyer but would be “providing services” to SVB’s bridge bank. Zuckert received nearly $2.7 million in total compensation last year from SVB Financial, which hired him in 2014 as general counsel.

Prior to joining SVB, he spent more than 25 years at Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. Zuckert began his career at Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

Aside from Zuckert, at least two other SVB lawyers—deputy general counsel Annie Loo and corporate counsel Lindsay Docto—no longer work for the bank, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Neither responded to comment requests.

First Citizens

First Citizens has hired at least three new in-house lawyers this year—senior counsel Brian Lynch, senior corporate compliance counsel Amanda Perez, and associate counsel Stefan Longo. They join the bank from Capital One Financial Corp., Reverse Mortgage Funding LLC and Credit Suisse Group AG, respectively.

Zuckert didn’t disclose how many SVB lawyers have joined First Citizens. One former SVB lawyer, Colleen Graham, left ahead of its commercial banking unit’s implosion, Bloomberg Law reported in March.

First Citizens recruited Matt Martin, a former lawyer at North Carolina’s Smith, Anderson, Blount, Dorsett, Mitchell & Jernigan, as its chief counsel and corporate secretary in 2021. Smith Anderson advised First Citizens on its SVB acquisition. Martin previously was a U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina.

Martin wasn’t one of the five highest-paid executives at the Raleigh, NC-based bank in 2022, according to its most recent proxy statement.

Martin and media contacts at First Citizens didn’t respond to comment requests.

The sale of SVB to First Citizens—a deal in which Davis Polk & Wardwell and Sullivan & Cromwell also had key advisory roles—resolved the largest US bank failure since the 2008 global financial crisis. The US government-backed workout reportedly notched a $500 million gain for the FDIC.