Matthew L. Biben is a litigation partner and member of the firm’s White Collar & Regulatory Defense Group and the Banking and Consumer Finance practices. His practice focuses on advising organizations and individuals and investigating, negotiating and litigating complicated regulatory and enforcement matters of all types, with a particular focus on matters related to financial institutions.
Mr. Biben has extensive experience advising boards and senior management, and his enforcement and advisory work has been wide-ranging. It includes both domestic and international matters relating to mortgages and other consumer products and securitization claims, to data privacy breaches, anti-money laundering, False Claims Act and Bank Secrecy Act work.
Prior to joining Debevoise in January 2015, Mr. Biben served for three and a half years in increasingly prominent positions at JPMorgan Chase, most recently as the General Counsel for Chase Consumer & Community Banking, which included JPMorgan Chase’s Private Wealth Management, Card and Merchant Services, Auto Finance, Student Loan, Consumer Banking, Business Banking and Mortgage Banking businesses. He supervised a team of approximately 600 attorneys and professionals and served on the Executive Committee of Chase Consumer & Community Banking.
Mr. Biben joined JPMorgan Chase from Next Jump, Inc., a technology company, where he served as the company’s Chief Administrative Officer, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary.
Prior to that, he served as Executive Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation for almost seven years. He also served as BNY Mellon’s Chief Litigation Counsel and supervised various corporate functions that included the Office of the Corporate Secretary.
Mr. Biben spent the first 12 years of his career in government, serving in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division and received the Attorney General’s Director Award for superior performance. Previously, he was an Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office. He argued numerous appeals in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and was lead counsel in more than 25 federal and state trials.
Mr. Biben has served as Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for more than 19 years, teaching seminars in legal philosophy, federal crime, and corporate law and governance.
Among other recognitions, Mr. Biben was named Global Litigation Counsel of the Year in 2009 by the Association of Corporate Counsel (“ACC”) and ILO Organizations. He and his BNY Mellon Regulatory/Enforcement team was a finalist for the ACC/ILO Regulatory Team Award in 2010. In 2012, he received the Nazareth Housing Community Leadership Award. In 2013, he was named to the “Corporate Counsel 100.” He chaired JPMorgan Chase’s Diversity Committee, and the New York Law Journal recognized his team’s work as the Outstanding Legal Department for Diversity in 2014. In 2014, he was also recognized by the ACC as an ACC Value Champion for reducing outside counsel spend by more than $12 million. Finally, in 2014 he and his team were recognized as the Financial Services Team of the Year by The Legal 500.
Mr. Biben serves on the Board of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. He also serves on the Board of the New York Legal Assistance Group (“NYLAG”) from whom he received the 2014 Community Leadership Award. In addition, he serves as a Trustee on the Cornell University Board of Trustees.
Mr. Biben received a bachelor’s degree in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University in 1989 and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1992.
