Senior Chairman

Richard Beattie is Senior Chairman of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP where he specializes in counseling boards of directors and non-management directors on governance issues, investigations and litigation involving corporate officers and other crisis situations.  He also specializes in mergers and acquisitions and leveraged buyouts.  He has participated in some of the larger and more complex financial transactions, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s $58 billion acquisition of Bank One Corporation, the merger of America Online and Time Warner and the merger of WellPoint Health Networks with Anthem Inc. 

Mr. Beattie has a long record of public service.  During the Carter Administration, he served as General Counsel of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and in 1980, as Director of the Transition and Counsel to the Secretary of Education, he was in charge of organizing the U.S. Department of Education.  During the 1980’s, Mr. Beattie served on the New York City Board of Education.  He has served as a Special Advisor to the Secretary of State and during 1995-1997 was President Clinton’s Emissary for Cyprus.

Mr. Beattie is also Chairman of the Board and founder of New Visions for Public Schools, a not-for-profit organization that develops and implements programs to affect system-wide improvements in public education in New York City.  He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Harley-Davidson, Inc., Heidrick & Struggles, the Carnegie Corporation and the National Women’s Law Center, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Vice Chairman of the Board of Overseers and Managers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Chairman of the Board of Managers of Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases.  Mr. Beattie is the recipient of a Bank Street College Honorary Doctorate of Education and the President’s Medal, The Legal Aid Society’s Servant of Justice Award and The Jewish Theological Seminary’s Judge Simon H. Rifkind Award.

Mr. Beattie joined Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in 1968 after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  Prior to law school, he served four years in the Marine Corps as a jet pilot after graduating from Dartmouth College in 1961.