Law & Finance Series- The Evercore Breach: A Case Study on the Importance of Scrutinising Confidentiality Provisions
Hi everyone, Here’s a fun fact to kick off today’s post: I’m on a mission to cut out carbonated drinks from my life. As you would imagine, this often means not just avoiding the fizzy stuff itself, but steering clear of any digital or physical content that even remotely touches on it. Yet, when I stumbled upon the news that AriZona Beverages (longtime maker of 99 cents beverages in the US) had accused Evercore (a prominent global independent investment banking advisory firm) of a confidentiality breach, I couldn’t resist the urge to dig further into a case that so beautifully intersects Law and Investment Banking. A can of AriZona sitting pretty. Let’s get right into it. What happens when an investment bank, with the sole consent of its client, uploads a Supply Agreement between that client and a third-party to a Virtual Data Room (VDR). The third-party then claims that this upload is a breach of confidentiality, arguing that the agreement contains sensitive business secrets and that i...