Samuel Butler, a Midwesterner who grew to become a prime determine of the Wall Avenue 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 an almost five-decade profession as a lawyer — 18 of these years as presiding associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, one in all Wall Avenue’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 as we speak’s company giants.
He was additionally credited with serving to Cravath, lengthy referred to as a legislation agency to blue-chip firms 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 consider all the large offers that have been happening within the ’80s and ’90s, Sam was proper there,” Faiza Saeed, Cravath’s present presiding associate, who labored with Mr. Butler on the Capital Cities deal, stated in an interview.
Mr. Butler himself performed down his mergers credentials. “I don’t regard myself as a basic M.&A. transactional lawyer,” he stated 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 fashionable period, Warren E. Buffett, of Berkshire Hathaway. The 2 obtained to know one another within the Nineteen Seventies, when Mr. Butler was a director of Geico, then a troubled auto insurer that out of the blue discovered itself with a serious new shareholder: Mr. Buffett, who had amassed almost a fifth of the corporate’s shares.
The boys, each sons of the Midwest, fashioned a friendship that led to one in all Mr. Butler’s highest-profile skilled accomplishments. Mr. Buffett referred to 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 apprehensive 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 stated in a 2007 interview with The Wall Avenue Journal.
When Mr. Buffett defined the scenario to Mr. Butler, Mr. Butler reduce him off, Mr. Buffett recalled, telling him, “We’re taking the project.”
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, all people needed him as their lawyer,” Mr. Buffett stated 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 college’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 the USA Supreme Court docket 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 youngsters, Sam Butler Jr., Leigh Butler and Elizabeth Boissard; 9 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
After navy 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 very best jobs have been there, and joined Cravath in 1956. He made associate in 1960.
Mr. Butler, who stepped down as presiding associate in 1998 and retired in 2003, was identified 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 stated.
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. Exterior 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 sources.
“He devoted huge time and vitality to maintaining the library sturdy,” Ms. Saeed stated. “He considered that as a part of his accountability, as somebody who had been lucky to have success in enterprise.”
