Who Dumped WinstonHeller.com ... and Why?

It seems like only yesterday that Legal Pad's Niraj Chokshi was speculating as to why someone, with deliberate efforts to hide his/her/the-corporate-its identity, had bought two URLs that suggested a merger between troubled Heller Ehrman and Chicago's Winston & Strawn.

We called both firms to ask, and San Francisco's Heller got back to us with a shrug and wide, innocent eyes, and we posted here to that effect. Which seems to have rattled someone's cage: Today, all of a sudden, both URLs are available again, according to Above The Law, which has also been discussing Heller's fortunes.  We were this close to buying the @ddresses ourselves today, with the promise to turn 'em over if the firms gave us the inside tip on the merger, but it turns out blackmail is technically unethical.

Does the unURLing mean any merger is off?  Dunno. If we were going to engage in unfounded speculation (one of the main reasons the Internet gods created blogs), we'd say low-grade talks had occurred, so someone grabbed the URLs, then decided to un-grab 'em just to quiet all the, um, unfounded speculation. Working great so far!

—  Brian McDonough

Comments

[Anonymous]

Could be frontrunning.

[Anonymous]

Or Money Laundering. VLG/Heller's specialty.