Squire Patton Boggs is pleased to announce the appointment of D. Michael Kaye as a partner into the firm’s International Trade Practice and Commodities and Shipping Industry Group. He joins from Baker McKenzie, where he spent two years as the Global Director of Business Management, and prior to that from Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), one of the world’s largest food processing and commodity trading corporations, where he was the Chief Counsel of ADM’s largest business unit.
Mr. Kaye will join Squire Patton Boggs’ global team of international trade regulatory and trade policy experts advocating on behalf of clients’ trade interests. He has decades of experience handling international trade remedy cases and disputes in Washington DC, both as a government lawyer and in law firms.
He will also be the latest addition to the firm’s Commodity and Shipping Industry Group, which Squire Patton Boggs launched in November 2019. The global team provides a full range of legal services on all aspects of international trade and shipping and across all commodity sectors, including advice and assistance with transactions, corporate matters, trade finance, litigation and arbitration, regulatory matters, environmental law, renewable energy, derivatives and projects.
During his seven-year tenure at ADM, Mr. Kaye oversaw all legal issues relating to the company’s grain origination, processing and trading assets worldwide, as well as the company’s transportation and logistics assets and a number of its specialty units. He also oversaw international trade and commercial issues for the company, including its international disputes and arbitration matters. In addition to his law firm, in-house and government legal experience, he spent a number of years living and working in South America as an investor and director in a number of food- and food-ingredient production companies. Mr. Kaye has lived a large portion of his life overseas and graduated from a Japanese high school. He speaks fluent Japanese and Spanish.
In welcoming him to the firm, Steve Mahon, global managing partner – Clients and Strategy, said, “We are very excited to have Mike joining our firm, and to continue expanding our capabilities on the full range of commodities, international trade and commercial, transportation and finance issues. Mike is ideally suited to help the firm fashion cross-practice solutions for our clients across a number of critical sectors.”
George Grammas, the Washington DC-based co-chair of the firm’s International Trade Practice, commented, “Mike has incredible experience working on international trade issues around the world. His arrival helps further establish our firm as the law firm of choice for international trade work for commodities, food products and related industries. His arrival reflects the firm’s continued development and growth of its international trade practice and our efforts to support our multinational clients as they deal with increasingly complex global supply chain issues.”
Chris Swart, the co-head of the firm’s Commodity and Shipping Industry Group added that “a number of us in our group have known and worked with Mike over the past nine years on international commodity contracts, litigation, arbitration and corporate issues, as well as international financial transactions. We are extremely fortunate to have someone of his experience and caliber joining our team.”
Mr. Kaye commented, “I am delighted to be joining Squire Patton Boggs. The firm’s extensive global reach makes it an ideal place to represent multinational clients and they are also one of the few major law firms with strong commodity and shipping practices for both corporate and dispute resolution. This is of vital importance to major agricultural commodity and food products companies. Finally, there are great lawyers at the firm that I have known and worked with for years.”