Litigation Challenges: Addressing the Top Concerns of Your Legal Teams and Business Partners

Rory Mouat is a Managing Director on the Real Estate Legal team and plays a key role in the legal structuring and management of new and existing investments within Blackstone’s real estate portfolio in the Americas.

Prior to joining Blackstone, Mr. Mouat was an Associate at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, practicing in the real estate group with a wide practice scope including joint ventures, acquisitions, dispositions, leasing and financings on behalf of both borrowers and lenders.

Mr. Mouat received a BA with High Honors from UC Berkeley and a JD cum laude from NYU School of Law.

Andrew is an expert in creating communications strategies particularly focused on difficult situations, overseeing and implementing crisis preparation, public affairs efforts, managing product recalls, financial and/or regulatory issues, and identifying and managing communications issues around complicated litigation.

Andrew founded KARV eleven years ago, after working as Managing Partner at Strategy XXI Group and Kreab since 1997. As a political appointee in the Clinton Administration in 1993, he was the Communications Director for the US Information Agency, the White House communications representative for coordination of media during the 1994 GATT signing in Morocco; Deputy Spokesman for the US Delegation to the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights; National Security Council media representative in Haiti; worked on more than two dozen overseas trips of the President and Vice President, including APEC and G-7 Summit Meetings; and worked with more than a dozen federal agencies and cabinet officials. He was a founder of Volunteers for Democracy and worked in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Ukraine during their transitions to democracy, from 1989-1991.

Andrew is the co-author of Revolution Road Trip and has written articles for several American and foreign newspapers, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a Board Member of the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce in New York.

He is a former Adjunct Professor of Crisis Communications at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business, and has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, American University, among others.

Robert Ansell is the Vice President and General Counsel for Power-Flo Technologies, Inc. a privately held company with eleven locations in New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Mr. Ansell is a key member of senior management, primarily advising other corporate officers and ownership on company-wide policies and transactions. He counsels Power-Flo’s C-level executives on business strategy, risk management, financial, operational, and information technology issues.

Mr. Ansell is also an Adjunct Professor of Law of Fundamental Lawyering Skills at Hofstra University and frequently chairs panels and lectures on several topics for the New York State Bar Association.

Before Power-Flo , Mr. Ansell was in private practice for 25 years, working at a Long Island, New York boutique litigation and bankruptcy firm, where he managed its litigation practice group, and provided general counsel and advisory services for business mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, and risk management.

Chris Correnti started his legal career in 1984 at Moore Stout Waddell & Ledford in Northeast Tennessee. Chris’ primary areas of practice included corporate and business transactions and disputes, banking law, business litigation, and real estate and environmental law. He also represented the Kingsport Industrial Development Board where he was a primary architect of the Phipps Bend Joint Venture owned by the Kingsport and Hawkins County Industrial Development Boards. The Joint Venture was created to market and sell land formerly used as a nuclear power plant.

Chris joined AGC Flat Glass North America, Inc. in 1994 as Associate General Counsel. He became General Counsel & Secretary in 2002 and was appointed as Vice President in 2007. In 2013, Chris assumed responsibility for all North America legal and corporate compliance matters for all AGC America businesses. AGC America owns businesses in the auto glass, chemicals, electronics, life science, and electrochemical industries. In April 2019 he was appointed President & CEO of AGC America and continues as General Counsel in North America for AGC as well.

Andrew Siegel is General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Galaxy Digital, a financial services firm dedicated to the digital asset industry. He has over twenty years of experience advising financial services firms on legal, regulatory and compliance matters, including at Perella Weinberg Partners and Morgan Stanley. Previously in his career, he was a corporate attorney at Shearman & Sterling where he focused on public and private mergers and acquisitions, private equity transactions, and joint ventures. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Tufts University and a J.D. from Washington College of Law at American University where he was an editor of The American University Law Review.