In the summer of 2008, when just about nobody wanted to invest in banks, David Shapiro had a client who did. But it wasn’t going to be easy.
“We were going into the depths of the financial crisis, and people were expecting a tidal wave of failed banks,” says Shapiro, a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Where others saw danger, Shapiro’s client, FBR Capital Markets Corporation, saw opportunity. FBR wanted to create a blind pool–private placements of investor cash–that could be used to invest in small financial institutions.
