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Mr Wayne M. Perry
Member, Past Chairman
Mr Wayne M. Perry
Member, Past Chairman
Wayne
M. Perry (USA) currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Shotgun
Investments, LLC. He began his telecommunications career with McCaw
Cellular Communications Inc. in 1976, serving as legal officer, General
Counsel, President, and finally Vice-Chairman, a position he retained
until McCaw’s merger with AT&T Wireless. He co-founded Edge
Wireless, LLC in 2000 where he served as CEO until it was sold to
AT&T in 2008. He is also a minority owner of the Seattle Mariners
major league baseball team, and serves on the Board of Directors of
Baseball of Seattle, Inc.
Became a member of the World Baden-Powell Fellowship in 2005 and joined the WSF Board in 2008.
Wayne
has a B.A. from the University of Washington (Cum Laude), a J.D. from
Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College (Cum Laude) and
an L.L.M. in Taxation from New York University School of Law. He is a
member of the Washington State Bar Association, and a member of the
University of Washington Business School Advisory Board and teaches a
Business Simulation course on mergers and acquisitions there as a
visiting professor.
In 1980, Wayne began his work with Scouting as a Cubmaster with Pack 601 in Bellevue, WA. He has filled many positions since then, including Scoutmaster, District Chairman, Council President (Chief Seattle Council), Regional President (Western Region), a member of the National Executive Board, International Commissioner, and a member of the World Scout Foundation Board. He currently serves as a past President of the Boy Scouts of America.
In addition, Wayne has received numerous Scouting Awards, including the Silver Beaver, Silver Antelope, Silver Buffalo, Heroism Award, and the Bronze Wolf Award. He is a member of the Order of the Arrow and holds the Wood Badge.
Wayne and is wife, Christine (who also holds the Wood Badge), are the parents of four Eagle Scout sons: Kevin, Gregory, Douglas and Justin. In addition, Wayne is a private pilot, and an avid outdoorsman, enjoying hunting and fishing.
Wayne and Christine believe their donations to World Scouting are a great investment in the youth of the world. No other youth-serving organization can teach youth about leadership and character with the efficiency of Scouting.
In 1980, Wayne began his work with Scouting as a Cubmaster with Pack 601 in Bellevue, WA. He has filled many positions since then, including Scoutmaster, District Chairman, Council President (Chief Seattle Council), Regional President (Western Region), a member of the National Executive Board, International Commissioner, and a member of the World Scout Foundation Board. He currently serves as a past President of the Boy Scouts of America.
In addition, Wayne has received numerous Scouting Awards, including the Silver Beaver, Silver Antelope, Silver Buffalo, Heroism Award, and the Bronze Wolf Award. He is a member of the Order of the Arrow and holds the Wood Badge.
Wayne and is wife, Christine (who also holds the Wood Badge), are the parents of four Eagle Scout sons: Kevin, Gregory, Douglas and Justin. In addition, Wayne is a private pilot, and an avid outdoorsman, enjoying hunting and fishing.
Wayne and Christine believe their donations to World Scouting are a great investment in the youth of the world. No other youth-serving organization can teach youth about leadership and character with the efficiency of Scouting.
E-Mail:
info@worldscoutfoundation.org
Influential AT&T counsel passes a legacy
Wayne
Watts, an unknown criminal defense lawyer, was eating lunch at Peggy’s
Beef Bar in the fall of 1983 when he spotted an advertisement by
Southwestern Bell for a full-time in-house trial lawyer.
Days later, he was hired for $45,000 a year as one of 60 lawyers in the telephone company’s legal department.
Three
decades later, Watts is one of the most influential and well-paid
business lawyers in the world. He built the company's legal department
into one of the largest and most prestigious in the U.S. His
compensation last year, according to Corporate Counsel magazine, topped $10 million.
Next
week, the General Counsel Forum, a group of 700 chief legal officers at
the largest businesses in Texas, will honor Watts with its prestigious
Robert Dedman Award for Ethics and Law.
“The moral of the story is to eat more fried pies and onion rings,” he says.
On
Wednesday, Watts, who is 62, retires from AT&T as its executive
vice president and general counsel and passes the mantle to his
handpicked successor, David McAtee. The antitrust lawyer at Dallas-based
Haynes and Boone was hired three years ago by Watts to be his chief
deputy.
“It’s
the end of an era,” says Mike Boone, a corporate M&A partner and
co-founder of Haynes and Boone in Dallas. “Wayne will go down in history
as one of the great corporate general counsels. His successor is going
to be great, too.”
Watts says he spent a significant amount of time during the past year preparing for his departure.
"The idea was to bring David in and see if he's the right person for the job," Watts told The Texas Lawbook in an exclusive interview. "He is the right person. This department is in really good shape for a long time."
The
transfer of power comes at a time when AT&T faces increased
regulatory scrutiny by multiple federal agencies, while at the same time
trying to integrate its recent $49 billion purchase of DirecTV.
“This
has been a great job,” Watts says. “But I’ve told David that he’s not
going to have nearly as much fun as I have had. The regulatory pressures
are unrelenting.”
Critical player
McAtee
and others say Watts revolutionized the position of corporate general
counsel from being just a lawyer whom executives called when there was a
crisis to being a critical player intricately involved in every aspect
of the company’s operations.
Exxon
Mobil general counsel Jack Balagia says Watts understood that it was the
legal department’s responsibility to help the business’s executives
“achieve their objectives in full compliance with the law, and protect
the business and the shareholders from possible legal pitfalls and
significant litigation.”
During the
past 32 years, Watts guided the phone company through dozens of
mega-mergers and acquisitions with a combined value of nearly $300
billion. Those transactions transformed the smallest of the seven Baby
Bells into the modern-day global communications giant AT&T.
As
AT&T expanded, Watts grew the legal department to the 600 attorneys
it has today, making it one of the largest in-house corporate legal
departments in the world.
“We now have
270,000 employees,” he says. “Somebody is going to make a mistake.
Somebody is going to be a dumbass. In a company of our size and reach,
we are going to have a lot of legal issues.”
Watts
also used his position as a bully pulpit to push a progressive social
agenda. He aggressively pressured Texas law firms to add more women and
ethnic minorities to their lawyer ranks. He encouraged those law firms
to commit more time to legal services to the poor.
Watts’
“leadership on the Texas Access to Justice Commission has been pretty
stellar,” says Balagia, referring to the volunteer agency that funds pro
bono services throughout the state. “He has helped raise significant
dollars for the provision of legal services to the poor and to veterans
in Texas.”
Perry Mason protege
Watts says he wanted to be a lawyer since he was 10 years old and watched Perry Mason on television.
“Lawyers were fighting for people and saving lives,” he says.
Watts
went to college at the University of Texas at Arlington and then law
school at Southern Methodist University. His first actual case came
during his third year at SMU when a fellow student was arrested for
resisting arrest at a party.
"I filed a
motion to dismiss and was totally shocked when the judge granted it —
mainly because I don't know that we had any idea what we were doing,"
Watts told The Texas Lawbook in a 2013 interview.
Despite
his interests in criminal law and litigation, Watts will go down in
history as one of the great lawyers in corporate mergers and
acquisitions.
Southwestern Bell moved Watts to the company’s M&A team in 1988, and Watts got right to work.
After
a series of smaller acquisitions, Watts led SBC’s purchase of Pac-Tel
in 1997 for $16 billion and Southern New England Telephone Co. in 1998
for $4.4 billion. Later that same year, he engineered SBC’s $62 billion
merger with Ameritech. In 1999, he led SBC’s $1.7 billion acquisition of
Comcast Cellular.
In
2005, SBC purchased AT&T for $16 billion and officially adopted its
target’s corporate name. A year later, AT&T acquired BellSouth and
Cingular Wireless — now AT&T Mobility — for $66 billion.
In July, Watts closed on AT&T’s purchase of DirecTV for $49 billion.
“Wayne
has been front and center in shepherding this company from a wired
business to a wireless business to now a video business,” says AT&T
senior executive vice president Bill Blasé, who has worked with Watts
for 25 years. “These mergers would not have happened without Wayne’s
calming influence and leadership.”
Asked to identify his biggest disappointment during his tenure at AT&T, Watts smiles.
“You’re
going to make me say it, aren’t you?” he responds. “T-Mobile. That was a
very dark day. I had a task and I didn’t get it finished. The DirecTV
deal made T-Mobile a lot less painful, but I will never get over it.”
Jared
Watts said he was with his father the day AT&T’s attempt to buy
T-Mobile for $39 billion in 2011 fell apart because of the U.S.
Department of Justice’s opposition on antitrust grounds.
“My dad was so dejected,” he says. “I’ve never seen him so exhausted and sad. You could tell he took it personally.”
So what comes next for Watts?
“I
look forward to getting up every morning and asking, ‘What am I going
to do today?’” Watts says. “I’m going to garden. I’m going to fish. I’m
going to play with my grandchildren. And I’m going to play golf.”
Lots of golf, he emphasizes.
For a longer version of this article, please visit TexasLawbook.net.
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