Samuel Butler, a Midwesterner who grew to become a prime determine of the Wall Road authorized world, advising on transformative takeovers and main metropolis establishments just like the New York Public Library, died on Jan. 4 at his residence in Manhattan. He was 94.
His household confirmed his demise in an announcement.
Over a virtually five-decade profession as a lawyer — 18 of these years as presiding companion at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, certainly one of Wall Road’s most elite companies — Mr. Butler grew to become a go-to adviser on main mergers and acquisitions, serving to to create a few of in the present day’s company giants.
He was additionally credited with serving to Cravath, lengthy often known as a legislation agency to blue-chip corporations like J.P. Morgan, get a bit of the offers increase that took off within the Eighties. He suggested the drug maker Squibb in its sale to Bristol-Myers in 1989, Time Inc. in its 1990 merger with Warner Communications, CBS in its 1995 sale to the Westinghouse Company, Capital Cities/ABC in its 1995 sale to Walt Disney, and Salomon Smith Barney in its 1997 sale to Vacationers Group.
“When you concentrate on all the large offers that have been happening within the ’80s and ’90s, Sam was proper there,” Faiza Saeed, Cravath’s present presiding companion, who labored with Mr. Butler on the Capital Cities deal, mentioned in an interview.
Mr. Butler himself performed down his mergers credentials. “I don’t regard myself as a basic M.&A. transactional lawyer,” he mentioned in a 2004 city corridor assembly at Cravath. “I might regard myself as a relationship lawyer.”
That was maybe most evident in his decades-long bond with one of the well-known company deal makers of the trendy period, Warren E. Buffett, of Berkshire Hathaway. The 2 acquired to know one another within the Seventies, when Mr. Butler was a director of Geico, then a troubled auto insurer that immediately discovered itself with a serious new shareholder: Mr. Buffett, who had amassed practically a fifth of the corporate’s shares.
The boys, each sons of the Midwest, fashioned a friendship that led to certainly one of Mr. Butler’s highest-profile skilled accomplishments. Mr. Buffett known as him on July 27, 1995, a Thursday, saying he wanted assist with a transaction that was to be introduced the next Monday: Disney’s takeover of Capital Cities, of which Berkshire was a serious shareholder.
Mr. Buffett was nervous that Capital Cities’ legal professionals didn’t have sufficient expertise with big-ticket transactions — and he knew that Disney was led by Michael Eisner, a hard-nosed negotiator, Mr. Butler mentioned in a 2007 interview with The Wall Road Journal.
When Mr. Buffett defined the state of affairs to Mr. Butler, Mr. Butler minimize him off, Mr. Buffett recalled, telling him, “We’re taking the task.”
The 2 events sprinted to complete the negotiations, and Disney’s takeover was introduced as scheduled, on July 31.
“Throughout Sam’s tenure at Cravath, everyone needed him as their lawyer,” Mr. Buffett mentioned in an announcement. “Berkshire was fortunate to have the chance to work with him.”
Samuel Coles Butler was born on March 10, 1930, in Logansport, Ind., to Melvin Butler, the enterprise supervisor and co-owner of the Muehlhausen Spring Manufacturing unit, and Jane (Flynn) Butler, a former schoolteacher.
Throughout World Struggle II, he attended Culver Army Academy, a preparatory boarding faculty in Culver, Ind., that he credited with difficult him academically. The varsity’s headmaster was an alumnus of Harvard and persuaded Samuel, who was first in his class, to use there.
He did, and went on to earn each his undergraduate and legislation levels at Harvard. He then clerked for Affiliate Justice Sherman Minton of america Supreme Courtroom and later served within the U.S. Military.
In 1952, he married Sally Thackston, whom he had met when he was 16. She died in 2023. He’s survived by their three kids, Sam Butler Jr., Leigh Butler and Elizabeth Boissard; 9 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
After army service, Mr. Butler interviewed for authorized jobs in Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas and Houston, hoping, as a self-described small-town child, to keep away from transferring to New York Metropolis. However he realized that the most effective jobs have been there, and joined Cravath in 1956. He made companion in 1960.
Mr. Butler, who stepped down as presiding companion in 1998 and retired in 2003, was recognized amongst colleagues not just for his experience within the legislation however for an unprepossessing method and for selling the work of youthful legal professionals. “He was not simply the eminence grise, and everybody else was only a bag service,” Ms. Saeed mentioned.
Past his work for company giants, Mr. Butler represented the European Union and the European Funding Financial institution in American securities legislation issues for greater than 40 years. Outdoors the workplace, he devoted his time to a number of nonprofit establishments, together with his alma maters Harvard and Culver, the American Museum of Pure Historical past, Vassar Faculty and the September 11 Sufferer Compensation Fund.
Chief amongst these establishments was the New York Public Library, the place Mr. Butler was a board member for 45 years and chairman from 1999 to 2004. A prolific fund-raiser, he helped the library pay for constructing renovations and the growth of its digital assets.
“He devoted huge time and power to preserving the library sturdy,” Ms. Saeed mentioned. “He considered that as a part of his accountability, as somebody who had been lucky to have success in enterprise.”
