Frank Placenti serves as the chair of the US Corporate Governance & Securities Regulation Practice, and is nationally recognized for his work in corporate governance and mergers and acquisitions. Frank has more than 35 years’ experience in mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, internal investigations, securities law, antitakeover and shareholder relations issues. He has represented public companies, broker/dealers and private equity firms and their portfolio companies with mergers and acquisitions, capital formation, securities and corporate law, regulatory compliance, anti-takeover matters and shareholder engagement and activism. Frank has assisted clients, special committees and audit committees in managing internal investigations, as well as with US Securities and Exchange Commission and stock exchange investigatory matters.
Frank was the Founding President and Trustee of the American College of Governance Counsel and serves as chair of the Corporate Governance Committee of the American Bar Association.
Frank has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America since 2006, Chambers USA since 2003 and is a multi-year member of the Lawdragon 500, an acknowledgment given to the top 500 lawyers in America. The 2013 International Global Law Experts Awards recognized him as the Corporate Governance Lawyer of the Year in Arizona. He has been recommended in Arizona for corporate matters and mergers and acquisitions by PLC Which Lawyer? Yearbook since 2009 and is listed in the PLC Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions Handbook. Each year since 2007, Frank has been selected by his peers to appear in Southwest Super Lawyers, a distinction awarded to the top 5% of lawyers in the region. Frank is a member of Greater Phoenix Leadership, chairs the Equality Health Foundation Board and serves on the Arizona State University Lodestar Foundation Board.
He formerly served as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metropolitan Phoenix, as Chair of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and as Chair of the Phoenix Children’s Hospital Foundation and a member of that hospital’s Board of Directors. He also served as a member of the Boards of Directors of the Herberger Theater Company and the Arizona Science Center.
In addition, he served as the Lead Director for a Nasdaq-listed, publicly traded healthcare company and as Lead Director for a private company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, which serves the restaurant and hospitality industries. He currently serves on the board of a privately held, private equity-based company headquartered in New York serving major financial institutions.
Frank is editor of The Directors Handbook, A Field Guide to 101 Situations Commonly Encountered in the Boardroom, and has been invited to teach in the Distinguished Practitioners in Residence Program in the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.
Selected Transactions Experience
Selected Investigative Experience