Mr. Steven L. Clark

STEVEN L. CLARKPartner
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Steve Clark is the Chief Operating Partner of the firm and is a partner in the Corporate and Securities Department.He has been practicing law since 1968 when he joined Chapman and Cutler LLP.

Mr. Clark's experience includes extensive work in the corporate and securities area with an emphasis on traditional corporate securities transactions, including public (SEC-registered) and private offerings of debt and equity securities for foreign and domestic companies, as issuer's and underwriters' counsel (including IPOs and Rule 144A offerings).After the 1977 SEC Report on New York City, he became increasingly involved with municipal securities as underwriters' counsel for public offerings and institutional purchasers' counsel for private placements.Mr. Clark is particularly well known for his representation of Fannie Mae as the major purchaser of single family mortgage revenue bonds from nearly every state housing finance agency and numerous local issuers.His experience also includes representation of board committees and independent directors; taxable and tax-exempt securitizations of a variety of types of receivables; counseling banks and investment banks on regulatory compliance and enforcement issues relating to municipal finance activities; Investment Company Act regulation and transactional exemptions from regulation; mergers and acquisitions; and advising publicly held companies on an ongoing basis and preparing and reviewing proxy materials, 10-Ks and other periodic reports required to be filed with the SEC and other matters (including dealing with securities analysts and insider trading policies) as they relate to continued compliance with securities laws and related disclosure issues.

"That will lever [compliance] up into something that's going to cost a lot more time and expense," says Steve Clark, a partner with Chapman and Cutler, a Chicago-based financial services law firm.

One problem, for sure, is that auditors will have to piece together new procedures to assess client controls programs.That will make it tough for quantitative-minded accountants to gauge performance evaluations and other soft information provided in management reports, Clark thinks.

"That will lever [compliance] up into something that's going to cost a lot more time and expense," says Steve Clark, a partner with Chapman and Cutler, a Chicago-based financial services law firm.

One problem, for sure, is that auditors will have to piece together new procedures to assess client controls programs.That will make it tough for quantitative-minded accountants to gauge performance evaluations and other soft information provided in management reports, Clark thinks.

3. Sarbox doesn't stop at the shoreline.Laws governing exports and imports and foreign-based bribes and money laundering don't seem to have much to do with the domestically focused act.

But the onus that Sarbanes-Oxley puts on audit committees and independent auditors to ferret out wrongdoing is spurring a closer look at global operations, says Sturgis Sobin, a partner and director of the International Trade Regulatory Practice for Miller & Chevalier in Washington.

Sobin offers a hypothetical: While performing an annual audit of a multinational, auditors find suspicious payments on the books of the company's Indonesian subsidiary that have all the earmarks of bribes.

Kit Taylor , Executive Director of the MSRB and Steven Clark , Partner of Chapman & Cutler will be among the guest speakers.