November 03, 2004 LAWFUEL – Banking law, legal, law, attorney news Debevoise & Plimpton LLP is pleased to announce that Paul L. Lee has returned to the firm as a partner resident in the New York office. Mr. Lee will be a member of the Financial Institutions Group and will head the firm’s Banking Practice.
Immediately prior to returning to Debevoise, Mr. Lee was Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel of HSBC USA Inc., where he served as the senior legal officer in the United States advising senior management in the U.S. and London on legal, regulatory and compliance matters. He managed major U.S. corporate and litigation matters for HSBC USA Inc. and was a member of the bank’s U.S. Senior Management Committee and a member of the Risk Management Committee.
Wolcott B. Dunham, Jr., global co-head of the firm’s Financial Institutions Group, said, “We are delighted to welcome Paul back to Debevoise. He is widely known for his expertise in the banking industry. He brings a tremendous depth of experience as a corporate lawyer, both as a general counsel and in private practice, as well as experience in the public sector with leading bank supervisory agencies. This experience will be invaluable to our many clients in our rapidly growing financial institutions practice.”
Mr. Lee began his career as a corporate associate at Debevoise from 1974 to 1977, followed by a two-year stint at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he served as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and Special Assistant to the General Counsel of the Treasury.
Upon leaving the Treasury, he became Deputy Superintendent and Counsel of the New York State Banking Department until 1981, when he joined Shearman & Sterling as a partner. During his twelve years at that firm, Mr. Lee’s practice concentrated in banking transactions and regulation, handling mergers and acquisitions transactions and acting as underwriters’ counsel on offerings by banks and other global financial institutions. In 1994, Mr. Lee joined a client, Republic New York Corporation, as General Counsel. (Republic New York Corporation was acquired by HSBC in 1999 and became HSBC USA Inc.)
Mr. Lee has been a Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School since 2002 and was a Lecturer in Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School from 1983 to 1986. He received his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School in 1972, where he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Law Review and served as Law Clerk to Judge Walter R. Mansfield, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1973 to 1974. Mr. Lee received his B.A. summa cum laude from Georgetown University in 1969.
Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, a leading international law firm, was founded in 1931. Its more than 600 lawyers provide services in corporate, litigation, tax and trusts and estates law from offices in New York, Washington, D.C., London, Paris, Frankfurt, Moscow, Hong Kong and Shanghai.