It is my great honor to present the Judge Simon H. Rifkind Award to John Finley.  John personifies not only the legal acumen and accomplishment, but the spirit of humanity, that were Judge Rifkind’s hallmarks.

 

John is one of the leading lawyers of his generation, and would be of any generation.  After a stellar educational record at Penn, Wharton and Harvard Law, John joined Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, where he quickly became one of the country’s outstanding M&A practitioners, and was named “Dealmaker of the Year” three times by The American Lawyer.  John also served on Simpson Thacher’s executive committee and co-head of its global M&A practice.

 

This record of extraordinary talent and achievement did not go unnoticed, and John was selected to serve as Blackstone’s Chief Legal Officer, where he is also a Senior Managing Director and a member of the Firm’s Management Committee.  Here, too, John has become one of the most influential voices in the legal profession in multiple areas, including, in addition to M&A, regulation of private equity, corporate governance and the role of the general counsel.

 

I would like to depart from this visible record of accomplishment and speak about the underlying qualities that have made John so deserving of this award.  John is the consummate professional.  He uniquely combines a mastery of the law, the needs of the client and bedrock integrity.  He is such a highly successful negotiator and advocate because his credibility is total.

 

And John’s lodestar is “what is right”.  His respect for the law is deep and abiding.  John’s motto for his staff at Blackstone is “winning legally”.  He cites the groundbreaking work of Professor David Wilkins at Harvard Law School, in building a culture focused on being “legally astute”:  not viewing law solely as a constraint, but rather as a means to turn regulatory change into business opportunities as well as to shape the regulatory environment.

 

But perhaps even more than these qualities, what makes John an exemplar of the legal profession is his recognition that the profession is ultimately about people.  That the law does not make people, but people make the law.  Having worked on numerous matters with John, I have been particularly impressed by how he interacts with the people who report to him.  John treats them as a colleague rather than as subordinates, and their commitment to him is palpable.

 

Any professional’s true mettle is most clearly demonstrated when the stakes are the highest and the pressure is the most intense.  There could have been no situation that more clearly fit this description than the Lehman insolvency.  Throughout, John’s insights were penetrating, his judgments acute and his collaborative spirit omnipresent.

 

In the spirit of Judge Rifkind, John is deeply committed both to the legal community and the broader community in which we all live.  At Harvard Law School, John is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board and the Advisory Board on Corporate Governance.  He has served on the Board of Advisors of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia University, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and the Jewish Board of Family and Children Services.  John has played a leading role at the Penn Netter Center for Community Partnerships, which provides educational outreach and assistance from students at the University to its neighborhood.

 

Before closing, I want to recount two specific illustrations of John’s skill and integrity as a lawyer.

 

There is no more intellectually rigorous judge than Leo Strine.  His well-known opinion in the Toys R Us case validated John’s advice to the Special Committee on how to run a process of reviewing strategic alternatives. John was invited by Judge Strine to speak at his M&A class for a number of years to explain that advice.

 

When the debate over a corporation’s purpose recently became highly public, John was, at first, a lonely voice of dissent regarding a corporation’s obligations under the law.  But, John has always been a leader and not a follower, and his position was subsequently endorsed by Council of Institutional Investors, as well as major business publications.

 

Judge Rifkind’s “A Lawyer’s Credo” begins with the exhortation that a lawyer “must be governed by the code of honor and chivalry”.  John Finley is such a worthy recipient of the Simon Rifkind award because he embodies that code.