They’ve Got Next: White Collar Fresh Face Janus Schutte

When Credit Suisse lost $5.5 billion in connection with Archegos Capital Management’s collapse last year, the Swiss bank wanted to know what went wrong.

That search for answers led to one of the more interesting and challenging matters that Janus Schutte has handled in his career.

Schutte was on the Paul, Weiss team hired by a special committee of the bank’s board to investigate. In a thorough inquiry conducted at blistering speed, the firm interviewed over 80 people and reviewed millions of documents, culminating in a 165-page report released July 2021, four months after Archegos’ collapse.

“What’s unique about it is the intense pressure that we were under,” said Schutte, 36. “Our team worked nonstop, seven days a week.”

The client wanted answers, and wanted them fast. The 2011 Columbia Law School graduate said the team was “up to the challenge of getting that accomplished and getting that accomplished well.”

Schutte, counsel in the firm’s litigation department, is no stranger to major white-collar and investigative work. Some other recent representations include former Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. CEO and chairman Carlos Ghosn in securities matters related to high-profile criminal charges in Japan, as well as independent members of the Tesla Inc. board in the Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into CEO Elon Musk‘s August 2018 tweet and other public statements concerning his proposal to take Tesla private.

Schutte is well-positioned to dive into complex financial issues, having joined the storied Wall Street law firm in 2011, in the wake of the financial crisis.

That was a “very pivotal time to start my career, because it allowed me to get intense experience from the beginning,” he said.

Jessica Carey, co-chair of the firm’s litigation department and a mentor of Schutte’s who has worked with him for years, including on the Credit Suisse report, likewise pointed to his early experience as crucial.

“Once you’re inside complex financial institutions and you have spent time really understanding, for instance, complex derivatives products, you have that to rely upon,” she said.

The report Schutte and his firm colleagues produced examined the bank’s relationship with Archegos, whose default prompted billion-dollar losses. Among the failures the firm identified was ineffectively managing risk in the bank’s prime-services business. The report didn’t find fraud or illegal conduct.

A key part of the investigation was interviewing current and former Credit Suisse employees, which let Schutte use skills he has honed over time.

“It’s really about trying to develop that rapport with the witness and understand their perspective and their areas of knowledge—and show that you understand it, too,” he said. “You don’t want to go into an interview without that basis of knowledge, because otherwise you’re not going to have a successful interview to get the information that you need to really develop the investigation.”

Carey applauded Schutte’s approach.

“One of the skills Janus has that’s particularly valuable to the white-collar practice is the ability to relate to and ask questions of and get information that is useful from a variety of people at different levels of seniority within organizations,” she said.

She called Schutte “an incredibly well-rounded litigator,” deeming his combination of investigative and litigation skill “very unique for a lawyer of Janus’ seniority.”