Chris McKay

Chris has worked on a variety of commercial disputes involving breach of contract claims, franchise agreement violations, natural resource damages assertions, the enforcement of intellectual property rights, product liability claims, and post-acquisition disagreements. He has performed statistical and regression analysis, dataset acquisition and construction, and data quality assessment in the context of securities and labor class actions, as well as corporate fraud investigations. He also has extensive experience helping clients to formulate and respond to representations and warranties claims. On consulting matters, he has performed economic impact analyses, labor compliance reviews, financial conduct and fraud risk assessments, evaluations of bond prospectuses, and a variety of econometric studies.

In addition to serving clients, Chris has designed and executed business development initiatives, produced thought leadership and training materials, and served as an instructor for courses on dispute resolution, statistics, and project management.

Chris’ professional experience includes:

• Regulatory Compliance Review: On behalf of the federal government, researched suspicious trading activities of international brokerage. Replicated brokerage’s multi-tiered data management system by merging seven years of trading data from hundreds of proprietary databases. Analyzed relevant transaction and market data to identify potentially suspicious trades. Coordinated highly focused document searches to identify correspondence associated with flagged trades.
• Representations and Warranties Claims: On behalf of a major insurance carrier, responded to insured’s/buyer’s claims regarding the alleged misstatement of pre-closing financial statements. Helped to dismantle buyer’s analysis of alleged losses by critiquing payroll sampling analysis, proving the lack of a recurring loss, and calculating the alleged impact in terms of lost profits (instead of the purchase price adjustment proposed by buyer). Helped insurer to settle for small fraction of original claim.
• Forensic Investigation: For a billion-dollar hedge fund responding to an SEC inquiry, managed a database of more than 400,000 transactions. Analyzed historical trading patterns by product type and broker. Evaluated the efficiency and profitability of transactions using market benchmarks. Used regression analysis to understand predictors of trade commission rates. Drafted expert report for presentation to the SEC.
• Fraud Risk Assessment: On behalf of the retail banking unit of a major UK bank, helped to develop a framework for identifying, prioritizing, and mitigating fraud risks introduced by the shift to open banking associated with the European Union Payment Services Directive. Facilitated fraud prevention workshop with key stakeholders from the bank.
• Dispute Resolution and Preparation of Expert Testimony: For a stakeholder victimized by a real estate Ponzi scheme, analyzed property transactions, loan agreements, bank statements, and partnership contracts to construct comprehensive accounting reconciliation and damages model. Prepared expert witness testimony for deposition and trial, including the referencing of thousands of pages of support materials.
• Class Action Avoidance: On behalf of a petroleum producer, empirically analyzed allegations of price fixing by gas stations in producer’s Southwest distribution region. Developed SAS procedure to generate thousands of wholesale pricing charts simultaneously. Applied econometric analysis to prove lack of commonality and typicality amongst claimants. Helped client to de-certify class.
• Applied Data Discovery: For a LIBOR panel bank responding to shareholder class actions in the U.S., UK, Japan, and the Netherlands, prepared multiple productions of LIBOR-linked exchange-based and/or over-the-counter trading data by sub-setting, scrubbing, and standardizing more than 50 million booking and cash flow records.
• Liability Analysis and Calculation of Damages: For a manufacturer of exercise balls, estimated the but-for earnings potential of a National Basketball Association player allegedly injured as the result of a product defect. Assessed potential liability by utilizing statistical tests to compare the regressive effects of age versus injury on player performance and value.
• Natural Resource Damages Assessment: On behalf of the state of New Jersey, estimated historic and future lost tax revenues resulting from the release of dioxin into the Passaic River by a chemicals manufacturer in the 1970’s. Utilized regression analysis to understand assessed property value per acre as a function of proximity to polluted sites.
• Economic Consulting: For a world-famous theme park, estimated the economic impact to the city of Anaheim, California (in terms of job and wage creation and increased tax revenues) of the park’s expansion. Helped the park to compel the city to issue bonds to fund municipal improvements to accommodate the expansion.