The American legal system is built upon the ability of two sets of highly trained and highly compensated lawyers looking at the same set of evidence and spinning entirely opposing and irreconcilable stories from it. And so when a bank, about to be hit by a lawsuit for allegedly helping a client shield collateral from some hedge fund lenders, unexpectedly repays those lenders, to the penny—inclusive of many more pennies, indeed, than the creditor client has to its name—and three years early with its own money, to boot, the obvious conclusion available is that said bank fucked up big time. And this is the conclusion upon which Citigroup, the big-time fucker upper in this case, has weaved its legal story: No sophisticated investor, such as these hedge funds, could possibly believe that as financially-troubled a company as Revlon, the creditor in this tale, would have paid nearly $900 million it did not have early, and on a completely random date, at that, without first receiving a sternly-worded court order to do so, or, you know, giving the creditors about the receive this generous windfall something of a head’s up. Surprises are apparently not the way banks prefer to do these kinds of things.
