Alexander “Sasha” Aganin

Sasha Aganin coheads Cornerstone Research’s finance practices. He also serves on the firm’s executive committee and its conflict resolution committee. Dr. Aganin plays a leading role in the firm’s securities and commodities work, as well as in antitrust matters related to financial markets and institutions. He has extensive experience with regulatory and litigation matters involving private equity, bankruptcy, asset management, M&A, and corporate governance.

Dr. Aganin has assessed economic losses, loss causation, and valuation for companies and investors in a wide range of industries and across all classes of financial instruments. Many of his cases involve risk analysis, modeling, and analyses of big data. His FinTech experience includes matters related to cryptocurrency exchanges and cryptotoken economics.

Dr. Aganin has experience in all phases of litigation, including deposition and trial, and regularly leads large teams working with multiple experts. He has also worked on a variety of internal investigations, and appeared before the enforcement staffs of the SEC, FINRA, and state attorneys general (AGs) on behalf of clients.

Dr. Aganin has coauthored publications on securities class action filings, damages in bankruptcy matters, corporate ownership, valuation, and equity financing. He has also spoken at legal and academic conferences on these topics.

Securities and commodities

Dr. Aganin has consulted on numerous notable matters, including:

• In re Twitter Inc. Securities Litigation
• Lehigh County Employees’ Retirement System v. Novo Nordisk A/S et al. 
• In re AOL Time Warner Inc. Securities Litigation
• In re Vivendi Universal S.A. Securities Litigation
• Richard Bell et al. v. Ascendant Solutions, Inc. et al.
• In re Superior Offshore International, Inc. Securities Litigation
• SEC v. Mozilo, Sambol, and Sieracki
• Vignola v. FAT Brands Inc. et al

He served as the testifying expert in In re Finisar Corporation Securities Litigation, a Section 10(b) matter in which class certification was denied for lack of price impact.

Dr. Aganin’s diverse experience in securities and commodities matters also includes:

• Testifying on class certification issues, loss causation, and damages
• Analyzing materiality, loss causation, and damages related to stocks, bonds, mutual funds, mortgage- and asset-backed securities, and cryptocurrencies
• Assessing alleged market manipulation (e.g., through short sales, spoofing, laddering)
• Addressing possible insider trading in various settings

Finance and antitrust

Dr. Aganin has addressed a range of issues related to market structure, competition, class certification, and damages, including in:

• In re Initial Public Offering Securities Litigation
• Municipal derivatives antitrust investigations
• Antitrust matters involving private equity, LIBOR, foreign exchange, U.S. treasuries, and government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) bonds. Many of these projects required analyses of datasets involving several terabytes of data.

Private equity

Dr. Aganin is an expert on the economics of private equity and hedge funds, including investment and financing strategies, competition, structure of funds, drivers of value, and compensation issues. His case experience includes:

• Valuing a venture capital management company
• Analyzing investment and exit strategies, performance, and valuation of portfolio companies of a venture capital fund
• Valuing a company in the context of a post-leveraged buyout dispute
• Addressing damages in a lawsuit brought by trustees of a failed fund of hedge funds against a third party

Bankruptcy and financial distress

In bankruptcy matters, Dr. Aganin’s case experience includes Unsecured Creditors of Iridium v. Motorola Inc., as well as:

• Assessing solvency, capital adequacy, ability to pay debt, and value exchanged in alleged fraudulent transfers
• Testifying on damages
• Analyzing damages related to “deepening insolvency”

Asset management

In numerous matters involving mutual funds and other traditional asset managers, Dr. Aganin has wide-ranging expertise, such as:

• Calculating the impact of errors in an algorithmic trading strategy and in valuation of illiquid bonds on customer accounts
• Investigating the consistency of regulatory reporting of data by financial institutions
• Addressing damages in mutual fund matters

M&A and corporate governance

Dr. Aganin has addressed M&A and corporate governance issues in a variety of litigation settings, including appraisals (e.g., In re Appraisal of Stillwater Mining Company), takeover defenses (e.g., Allergan Takeover Bid), and post-close disputes.

Risk analysis and modeling

Dr. Aganin applies sophisticated risk analysis, modeling, and statistical techniques across a variety of finance matters. His notable case experience includes assessing “Economic Equivalence” of Reference Obligations in a CLO and addressing effective ownership issues in CSX v. TCI et al. Additional expertise includes:

• Analyzing hedging by counterparties to total return swap contracts
• Evaluating the sensitivity of asset-backed securities values to interest rates
• Valuing cash flows from management of pension fund assets using Monte Carlo simulations
• Analyzing the profitability and risk of hedge fund investment strategies
• Summarizing risk characteristics of a portfolio of derivative securities