Thomas P. Peterson

Mr. Peterson, a shareholder in the firm's business and finance department, concentrates his corporate practice on the areas of mergers and acquisitions and human resources matters. For many years, he acted as counsel for an international cooperative for retail hardware, home center, garden center, lumber and building supply and equipment rental store owners. Tom served as its general counsel in lieu of an in-house legal staff, and, as a result, has worked extensively in all of the areas that would be expected of general counsel in an international company having sales of nearly $2 billion. This work involved several increasingly large and complex acquisitions over the past fifteen years. Tom was lead counsel in all of these transactions, which involved extensive work in the areas of tax, environmental, contracts, real estate, franchising, financing, Hart-Scott-Rodino filings, as well as general corporate issues including hostile shareholder groups, retention and severance packages for employees, and counseling directors as to fiduciary duties, fairness opinions, and procedures for Board and shareholder approval.

Tom regularly represents clients in several other industries in corporate and personnel matters. He was lead counsel in a merger between two large non-profit organizations that caused a Pittsburgh-based non-profit to grow to nearly 1 million members. For a number of regulatory and business driven issues, the transaction was structured as a reverse triangular merger between these two large non-profit corporations.

In addition to these larger clients, Tom focuses much of his practice on smaller family owned and private businesses, in such areas as corporate governance, commercial and contract matters, succession planning, exit strategies, mergers and acquisitions, and personnel matters.

Tom graduated from Gannon University in 1977, and received his law degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1980. After a one year judicial clerkship, he began private practice in Pittsburgh in 1981. He was selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® 2007 in the Education Law category.

< Back