Prominent attorney opens new practice

For an attorney whose cases revolve around sorting through the messes left behind from financial risk and loss, Burton Wiand has just taken a pretty big gamble: He has left the comfort of working for one of the Gulf Coast's most powerful firms to open a new practice.

The new firm is made up of seven partners and three other attorneys that worked together at the Tampa office of Fowler White Boggs under Wiand, a one time high-ranking attorney in the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division. The attorneys made up the bulk of Fowler White's business law division, working on cases from personal white-collar defense to defending corporations.

“We are a very close-knit group,” Wiand tells Coffee Talk. “We made a collective decision to go out on our own, outside a large firm. Maybe one day we'll grow into a large firm, too.”

The new firm is Wiand Guerra King, with attorneys George Guerra and Peter King joining Wiand as named partners. Wiand says the firm's focus will be similar to what the group zeroed in on at Fowler White: Complex litigation and regulatory matters in securities and financial services.

Wiand's team are also taking one of the region's more complex financial cases with them in the move. That's the case of Arthur Nadel, the Sarasota money manager facing federal criminal charges for allegedly bilking investors out of $400 million in a Ponzi scheme. Wiand is a court-appointed receiver in the case.