Bill is a partner in Reed Smith's Financial Industry Group. He specializes in providing high level counseling to CEO's, General Counsel, Boards of Directors and members of senior management of major financial institutions.
As the former Vice Chairman of The PNC Financial Services Group, he held management responsibilities for certain PNC staff functions, including legal, compliance, legislative affairs and media relations, and he was responsible for implementing best practices for corporate governance. He served on several senior management committees, including Mergers and Acquisitions, Corporate Re-Engineering and Consumer affairs, and also served as management liaison to a special ad hoc committee of the Board of Directors dealing with regulatory affairs and corporate governance. He also served as a PNC representative on the Board of Directors of BlackRock Investment Management, one of the largest investment management firms in the world.
Bill also had a distinguished 25-year career at FleetBoston Financial Corp. where he served as its Executive Vice President and General Counsel world-wide, responsible for all legal affairs of the company.
In addition, Bill served as Executive Director of the Independent Oversight Board for Arthur Andersen, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. The other members of the Independent Oversight Board included current and former CEO's of major U.S. companies. Bill advised the Board on proposed best corporate governance practices to be adopted by Andresen in the wake of governmental investigations and criticisms of that firm.
In private practice, Bill was a partner in the business law division of Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels in Boston, specializing in corporate governance issues. He began his legal career at the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.
In his roles at PNC and Fleet Boston, Bill developed expertise in myriad legal disciplines and related business activities, including:
- Regulatory affairs and testimony
- Legislative affairs and testimony
- Crisis management
- White collar criminal and internal investigations
- Senior human relations matters
- Senior executive compensation matters
- Major class action and other significant litigation management
- Financial services laws
- Merger and acquisition activity, including supervision of all aspects of approximately 50 acquisitions, including government assisted transactions
- Corporate ethics, best practices in corporate governance and all aspects of corporate disclosure and securities laws, including proxy statements
Bill has written numerous articles and lectured on various matters related to financial services law and matters of legal ethics.