Michael B. Eisenkraft

Michael B. Eisenkraft is a partner at Cohen Milstein where he serves in both the Antitrust and Securities practices. He also serves as the administrative partner of the firm's New York office, chairs the New Business Development Committee, and is a member of the Executive Committee.

Mr. Eisenkraft leads the firm's efforts in prosecuting innovative cases relating to the protection of global financial markets. 

He currently represents putative classes of investors asserting antitrust or securities claims in the Stock Lending, Interest Rate Swaps, Treasuries, Bristol CVR, KOSPI 200, XIV ETN, and Overstock.com markets. He has also helped investors reach settlements for over $580 million thus far in the Stock Lending antitrust litigation, recover hundreds of millions of dollars in the firm’s mortgage-backed securities cases and represents businesses in commercial contingency litigation including cases asserting claims for breach of contract and trade secret misappropriation. 

Furthermore, Mr. Eisenkraft serves as co-chair of the Committee on Federal Courts for the New York County Lawyers’ Association and on the Judicial Screening Committee for the Westchester County Democratic Party. In 2020, he was appointed by Law360 to serve on its Securities Editorial Advisory Board. 

For his work, Mr. Eisenkraft has been widely honored by the legal industry, including by Lawdragon as one of the 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers In the United States (2022 and 2023), by Benchmark Litigation as a "Litigation Future Star" (2022 and 2023) and "40 & Under Hot List" (2018 and 2019), by Legal 500 as a “Next Generation Partner” (2020-2023), and by New York Super Lawyers (Rising Star 2013-2019, Super Lawyer 2022, 2023).   In 2018, Law360 named Mr. Eisenkraft as one of a handful of "Rising Star - Securities," professionals under 40 whose work belies their age.  He has been rated "AV Preeminent" by Martindale-Hubbell for the past seven years.

Mr. Eisenkraft's notable successes at Cohen Milstein include:

• Stock Lending Antitrust Litigation (S.D.N.Y.):  $580 million in settlements thus far on behalf of investors in an antitrust case where Plaintiffs allege that the world’s largest banks engaged in a group boycott to thwart the modernization of the $1.7 trillion stock loan market in violation of the antitrust laws.
• NovaStar MBS Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): $165 million settlement on behalf of investors in a Securities Act litigation involving billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities underwritten by the Royal Bank of Scotland, Wachovia and Deutsche Bank.
• HEMT MBS Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): $110 million settlement on behalf of investors in mortgage-backed securities issued and underwritten by Credit Suisse after more than seven years of litigation, which included the first written decision certifying a Securities Act class of mortgage-backed securities in the country.
• RALI MBS Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): $335 million in settlements on behalf of investors in mortgage-backed securities issued by Residential Capital and underwritten by various investment banks after seven years of litigation.
• Harborview MBS Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): $275 million settlement on behalf of investors in mortgage-backed securities issued and underwritten by the Royal Bank of Scotland and its subsidiaries after more than six years of litigation.

• Dynex Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): $7.5 million settlement on eve of trial on behalf of investors in asset-backed securities. The decision certifying the class in the case was the first decision within the Second Circuit certifying a class of asset-backed bond purchasers under the 1934 Act.
• China MediaExpress Litigation (S.D.N.Y.): $12 million settlement with auditor defendant in case involving alleged fraud at Chinese reverse merger company China MediaExpress.  One of the largest settlements with an auditor defendant in a case involving a Chinese reverse merger company.
• LIBOR (Exchange Traded Class) (S.D.N.Y.): $187 million in settlements with defendants, the largest class action settlement of manipulation claims in the history of the Commodity Exchange Act, 7 U.S.C. § 1 et seq.