Michael B. Goldberg
Vice President & Assistant General Counsel
Wachovia Corporation
As Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at Wachovia Corporation, Mr. Goldberg has direct responsibility for a national litigation docket at the fourth largest financial institution in the United States with over $700 billion in assets and national and international lending/retail banking operations. Responsible for spearheading defense of litigation and overseeing budgets for legal process and disposition costs for several of Wachovia’s General Banking Group business units (including the World Savings Bank mortgage banking businesses and other specialty finance units like the former AmNet Mortgage Network; Westcorp; WFS Financial and Wachovia Mortgage Corp.). Mr. Goldberg also serves as corporate counsel and provides strategic and operational legal advice to business unit managers, senior bank officers and employees of Wachovia Corporation’s General Banking Group and its banking subsidiaries and affiliated businesses, regarding various legal issues concerning banking litigation, lender liability issues, lending rules, regulations, servicing and origination of loans, branch banking issues, UCC Articles 3 & 4, and other preventive law issues.
Mr. Goldberg began his legal career as a federal prosecutor in San Antonio, Texas where he served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney with the USDOJ and as an Assistant Staff Judge Advocate with the USAF. During his tenure as a federal prosecutor, Mr. Goldberg first chaired more then 75 felony jury trials. Thereafter, Mr. Goldberg entered private practice as a trial attorney where he represented Fortune 500 companies in complex commercial litigation matters for the international law firm of Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw in Chicago, Illinois including participating as trial counsel in a $500 million lender liability class action defense that resulted in a complete defense verdict. He then became a commercial litigation partner at Cox Smith Matthews Inc., the largest law firm in South Texas, where Mr. Goldberg led teams of associates and paralegals in trials of numerous complex commercial litigation matters.
During his legal career, Mr. Goldberg has garnered a number of accolades including being named “Prosecutor of the Year” and twice being named a “Texas Super Lawyer – Texas Rising Star” in Texas Monthly magazine while in private law firm practice. He has been named in the annual list of Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He was recently named as one of the select group of Under-40 professional leaders in America in Who’s Who in Emerging Leaders (2007 Inaugural Edition). He is licensed to practice in Texas, Illinois and Washington D.C. He received his law degree from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.