Fried Frank history

Harvey Pitt, the SEC general counsel who joined Fried Frank in 1978, was responsible for much of the Washington office's growth.

The firm's Washington, D.C., office went from 56 lawyers in 1982 to 93 lawyers just five years later.

In 1983 Fried Frank attorney Thomas Vartanian, as general counsel for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, had helped develop new rules that deregulated the savings and loans; unfortunately, many took on irresponsible loans and thus soon failed.

Moreover, in 1991, Fried Frank and the auditing firm Oppenheim, Appel, Dixon & Company agreed to settle a lawsuit out of court by paying $11.2 million to some 42 individual and institutional investors in Ivan F. Boesky & Company.

In July 1992 the law firm announced it had formed a representative office in Budapest, Hungary, in cooperation with the locally prominent law firm of Burai-Kovacs, Buki & Partner.

1993: The Paris office is started.

In 1997 Fried Frank, in a joint venture with the London law firm Simmons & Simmons that later was discontinued, worked on the $8 billion privatization of Endesa, the largest electric company in Spain.

In 1997 Fried Frank, in a joint venture with the London law firm Simmons & Simmons that later was discontinued, worked on the $8 billion privatization of Endesa, the largest electric company in Spain. It was involved in major initial public offerings (IPOs), including its 1998 representation of the underwriters in Republic Services's $1.5 billion IPO. One of the firm's major Latin American clients was Mexico's Grupo Televisa.

A Paris satellite office followed in 1993 and has since closed. It opened in Frankfurt in 2004.

The firm officially launched an office in Shanghai in October 2007.

In January 2015, Fried Frank announced it was closing its offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai, effectively pulling the plug on its Asia practice.