New York – Former investment banker Frank Quattrone struck a deal Tuesday with prosecutors to dismiss his long-running criminal case, saying he will resume a career that paid him up to $120 million a year for taking fledgling Internet companies public at the height of dot-com mania.
“A sunny day!” a triumphant Quat trone said outside U.S. District Court in Manhattan with a giddiness normally reserved for wedding days.
Moments earlier, the government let go of a case it pursued for three years through two trials. The deal calls for the charges to be dismissed after one year if Quattrone stays out of trouble.
Quattrone’s first trial ended in a deadlocked jury, but prosecutors landed a conviction the second time around. The verdict on charges that he obstructed a government probe of stock offerings and an 18-month prison sentence were tossed out by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March. Quat trone never served a day in prison.
The government had claimed Quattrone, 50, slyly urged 400 technology investment bankers he supervised from the Palo Alto, Calif., offices of Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. to destroy files when he learned about multiple investigations. He always said he did not.
On Tuesday, Quattrone appeared jubilant from the moment he entered U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels’ courtroom. He went straight to a courtroom artist, hugged her and said, “You look even better than I remember you last time.” Then he laughed repeatedly out loud, waved to a friend and giggled as he awaited Daniels, who approved the deferred prosecution agreement.
The agreement required no admission of wrongdoing or anything that would stand in the way of Quattrone’s business plans, a point he acknowledged in a statement outside court when he announced, “I plan to resume my business career.”
Timothy J. Coleman, a white-collar- crime expert at Dewey Ballantine and a former federal prosecutor, said Quattrone has received the same punishment as someone who smuggled a few Cuban cigars into the United States.
“If he holds up his end of the deal, it will be as if the case never happened,” he said.
