The rock star litigator who hopes to bring Elon Musk to heel

Bill Savitt’s colleagues at Wachtell, Lipton know when he is at his deepest in crafting an intricate legal argument: they can hear him jamming in his office on a Fender Telecaster electric guitar.

In corporate law circles, Savitt is recognised as one of the finest litigators in the US. His speciality is representing blue-chip boards of directors in messy disputes in Delaware, the tiny state where most American companies are domiciled.

But his presence in high-stakes legal battles was not preordained. After graduating from college, Savitt came to New York City in the late 1980s to play in various indie rock bands, paying his bills for a time by driving a taxi. Some of the acts were good enough to score appearances at the famed CBGB club. Yet as is the fate of most musicians, a proper career beckoned.

In the coming weeks, Savitt will have his turn in the legal limelight. Twitter has hired him to head to Delaware and try to save its $44bn deal with Elon Musk, who last week said he was walking away from his promise to buy the business.

A trial is expected in September and, barring a settlement in advance, would present Savitt with the gig of a lifetime, with a rapt audience around the world and the opportunity to bring the world’s richest man to heel.

Star lawyers can come across as swaggering gunslingers in court. But colleagues and adversaries alike say that this is not at all Savitt’s style. Rather he is a consistently deep thinker, prone to scribbling on sticky notes the ideas that will eventually fill his legal memos. His focus is intense enough that during the day he is known to avoid meals, subsisting instead merely on almonds and sparkling water.

“Bill is not a flamboyant guy. He walks softly and carries a big stick. He does not need to yell. He does not need to be overly dramatic. When he addresses the court you see his relaxed nature. It’s disarming,” said William Lafferty, a longtime Delaware lawyer. “Bill has a good view of the big picture and that’s really what matters to Delaware judges. How does this one case fit in the fabric of our law?” 

Another rival lawyer described Savitt as a “professor” for his encyclopaedic command of Delaware precedent cases.

It was a case representing private equity titan KKR that cemented Savitt’s status as superstar and also changed a significant aspect of corporate law.

In 2015, the Delaware Supreme Court confirmed Savitt’s thesis that a company that sold itself could immediately defeat a breach of fiduciary duty allegation if stockholders were fully informed of the deal circumstances and then voted to approve the deal.

At one point, Savitt nearly did become a full-time academic. After his rock-and-roll interlude, he enrolled in a graduate programme at Columbia University to study French legal history. Later he went to law school too, though would choose not to finish his dissertation. After law school came a clerkship for a federal appeals court and then a year as clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (during pandemic court hearings on Zoom, viewers could glimpse a photo of Savitt and Bader Ginsburg displayed behind his desk).

In 1999, he joined legal powerhouse Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Wachtell had made a name in the 1980s, both for advising companies during corporate raider mania and for standing in the middle of the legal fights in Delaware that would become crucial in defining corporate governance standards across America.

Over his career, Savitt has defended companies from shareholders who claimed to have been cheated in acquisitions, protected boards who had been besieged by activist investors and even assisted companies looking to wiggle out of signed acquisition contracts.

In 2017, a federal judge cancelled the star-crossed mega-merger of two US health insurers, Cigna and Anthem, on competition grounds. Cigna, Savitt’s client, was seemingly due a $1.85bn termination fee. Anthem baulked. A lengthy trial in Delaware ensued in 2019.

In a searing opinion, a judge later ruled that Cigna had sabotaged the merger agreement. It had waged what he branded a “covert communications campaign” to ensure its collapse, relying on the assistance of Wachtell and PR firm Teneo. The result, affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court, left Cigna empty-handed and Wachtell anguished.

To prevail in his present assignment, Savitt must demonstrate that the saboteur is Elon Musk. According to Twitter’s complaint, the Tesla founder’s cold feet come from the recent collapse in valuations of tech companies and that his “bad faith” is plainly apparent in his tweets trashing Twitter to tens of millions of followers.

The close-knit Wachtell team is now cramming around the clock to prepare for the coming legal showdown. And Savitt’s peers are almost unanimous in their belief that Twitter has chosen the person who can hit all the right notes in court.

Christine Mackintosh, a mainstay in Delaware legal circles who has previously squared off against both Savitt and Musk said: “If anyone can hold Elon accountable for his conduct here, it is Bill.”