Richard Ressler

MANAGING GENERAL COUNSEL

Richard “Rick” Ressler serves as Managing General Counsel of the firm. With over 25 years as an attorney, Mr. Ressler’s practice includes corporate and tax law, mergers and acquisitions, securities and financing, contract law, real estate, intellectual property oversight and licensing, and labor and employment issues, including stock and other benefit plans. Mr. Ressler has become an indispensable strategist and consultant for clients, helping them use the law as a tool to guide complex decision making.

Mr. Ressler offers clients a unique perspective because he has served both large and small companies, publicly traded and private, simultaneously as attorney and corporate officer; this includes time working for an "incubator" company that was commercializing technology. Mr. Ressler knows from experience that legal advice in a vacuum is not enough. Rather, his strategy and advice must take into consideration and directly help facilitate our clients' business goals in order to be effective and valuable. In addition to directly serving MosterWynne’s clients, he serves as General Counsel within the firm and uses his experience to strengthen our General Counsel Program for clients.

Mr. Ressler has worked on over 100 public offerings and private placements, representing underwriters, issuing companies, and large and small investors. He also has extensive experience in venture capital and other start-up investments, bank and other loan financings, structured financing, sophisticated leasing arrangements, and mergers and acquisitions. He has worked on joint venture and financing transactions involving entities in Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Argentina and England, as well as financings for the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.

Prior to joining MosterWynne, Mr. Ressler served as Vice President and Corporate Counsel to Centex Corporation in Dallas, Texas. He also served a concurrent role as General Counsel to Centex Title and Ancillary Services, a Centex subsidiary. Before his roles with Centex, he served as Assistant General Counsel to Union Pacific and Vice President and General Counsel to FENIX, a Union Pacific Corporation subsidiary. He also worked in private practice for prestigious law firms Sullivan & Cromwell and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom for a total of more than 9 years.

During his tenure at Centex, Mr. Ressler managed the legal components of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reporting and was the primary lawyer for Centex on many mergers and acquisitions. He was responsible for developing a corporate-wide compliance plan that governed all corporate entities and business units. That plan dealt with complex issues like Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, director and officer stock restrictions, corporate governance initiatives, political activity compliance, and Audit Committee interface. Mr. Ressler counseled the outside Board of Centex’s public real estate development affiliate, and spearheaded the various legal objectives of the company’s title insurance operations.

While at Union Pacific and FENIX, among other things, he directed the legal function for the “incubation” of Union Pacific’s technology-focused transportation assets to develop several stand-alone businesses for eventual IPO or sale. He represented these entities in acquisition transactions, strategic investments, and joint ventures, and prepared the legal documents to facilitate capital-raising. He established procedures for protecting intellectual property, and prepared equity plans, compensation and other new benefits plans, and employment and labor agreements for the employees that worked in his divisions.

Mr. Ressler was the primary counsel in charge of all Union Pacific’s financing transactions and SEC reporting. He also was a key player in the planning and execution of Union Pacific’s strategic initiatives, including acquisitions and sales of business units (including several major public transactions, a hostile tender offer and many smaller transactions), spin-offs, IPO’s, regulatory matters, international technology licensing projects, environmental audits, and corporate governance.

Mr. Ressler received his Juris Doctorate cum laude from Harvard Law School and his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Princeton University. He is admitted to practice law in Texas, New York and Pennsylvania (inactive in Pennsylvania).