A00466 - The Missing Items from Walter White's Introduction
I did indeed read Walter's entire introduction. However, I had to note that while it was extensive, it was not quite complete. Walter had not updated his intro in quite some time. So, he had failed to mention his recent work on the board of Lawyers Defending American Democracy
Walter Hiawatha White, Jr is the vice president of legal compliance and sustainability of Belfika Holdings (PTY) Limited - a mining and commodities trading company in South Africa. Belfika develops sustainable natural resources and seeks to beneficiate them locally before exporting them into the global markets.
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin where Walter began the practice of law, Walter served as the chair of the board of the Milwaukee Urban League, Chair of the Milwaukee Young Lawyers Association, on the board of the Milwaukee Symphony and the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. The Wisconsin Bar Board of Governors and as a director of the Wisconsin black Lawyers Association.
In the late 1980’s Walter served as Commissioner of Securities for the State of Wisconsin. In that capacity he investigated and prosecuted Drexel Burnham Lambert and authored the Wisconsin “Delaware style” Corporate Takeover Law. He has acted as an advisor to central banks, and financial regulatory agencies in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia on market, economic development and regulatory issues. Significant representations have included Salomon Brothers with regard to their US Treasury bond trading activities, as well as the longstanding representation of one of the world’s largest private commodities brokerage firms and one of the world’s largest aluminium firms on global trading and derivatives issues.
In 1990 Walter led a team of U.S. lawyers to Armenia to investigate the status of the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed lands in Nagorno Karabakh and the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic. That same year he led a team of election observers to observe and monitor the elections in newly independent Georgia the first multi-party elections in the history of the lands that comprised the former Soviet Union. Walter was privileged to be an honored guest in the Kremlin the day that the flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was lowered and the flag of the Russian Federation was raised.
In 1993 Walter was sent to South Africa After Nelson Mandela was released from prison but before the African National Congress was elected to power to help design leveraged buyouts so that Black South Africans, usually returning from New York, London, Hong Kong and Paris could participate for the first time in the “unbundling” and obtain access to wealth in the new post-apartheid economy.
In 1994, Walter was appointed to the board of the Congressionally funded Central Asian American Enterprise Fund by President Clinton and later served as its chair. The Central Asian Fund invested in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to stimulate an entrepreneurial economy in those newly independent states. Walter served as a non-executive director on the board of the Church Mutual Insurance Company from 1992 until 2018, where his service included the Audit Committee and the Risk Management Committee. In the UK he has served on the Financial Markets Law Committee: Steering Committee advising the G20 on “Implementing G20 Commitments Consistently”. In the 1990’s He served on the Deans Advisory Board on Finance and International Business at the University of Wisconsin, Graduate School of Business.
In the North American Securities Administrators Association Walter served as chair of the International Corporation Finance Committee, vice-chair of the Corporate Finance Section and on the SEC Task Force on the Canadian Multijurisdictional Disclosure System.
In the American Bar Association, he has served on the Board of Governors, was a founding director of the Center on Human Rights, which he later chaired; he also chaired the Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities (now the Section on Civil Rights & Social Justice) and the Young Lawyers Division. He has published books and articles on multinational business activity and lectured in North America, Europe, Central Asia and Africa. Walter a resident of London England has periodically been listed on the UK Powerlist as one of Britain’s 100 most influential people of African and African Caribbean heritage. In 2017 Walter founded the London Conversations a multinational conference of African, Asian and South American diaspora to discuss the ramifications of the rise of white nationalist fascism in the West and address it as an issue of multinational concern rather than domestic politics.
Walter is a member of P.R.I.M.E. Finance, the Panel of Recognised International Market Experts in Finance, an independent, not-for-profit foundation based in The Hague. P.R.I.M.E. facilitates the exchange of ideas that enables the promotion of certainty and reducing risk in the global financial markets. In 2018 Walter retired as a partner in the London office of McGuireWoods where he was the head of the firm’s emerging markets transactions practice. His work consisted of multinational securities transactions, international business and finance law issues, and complex litigation and related arbitration. He has represented clients in multibillion-dollar business transactions and litigation throughout North America, Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia and Africa. Walter was previously a partner at Bryan Cave in London preceded by his role as partner and Managing Director of Steptoe & Johnson International while he was based in Moscow Russia. Prior to moving overseas in 1994 Walter was a partner at Quarles & Brady and he began his career as an associate at Michael Best & Friedrich. While earning his law degree from UC BerkeleyLaw, Walter was a judicial extern for the Honorable Robert F. Peckham of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Upon graduation from Amherst College, he was named a John Woodruff Simpson Fellow. He also studied at the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, in (then) Leningrad USSR.
Walter has been admitted to practice in Wisconsin, Washington D.C. the Qatar International Court; and has previously been registered with the Solicitors Regulatory Authority in England and Wales and the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.
Amherst College BA ’76, University of California JD ’80.
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