James E. Odell — Partner of the Finance, Restructuring & Bankruptcy Group at Blank Rome LLP

Mr. James E. Odell, also known as Jim, has been a Co-Head of the Financial Services Industry Team and Partner of the Finance, Restructuring & Bankruptcy Group at Blank Rome LLP since May 05, 2014. Mr. Odell has more than 30 years of top-level experience in the financial services industry, serving in a number of inside and outside counsel positions for leading banks and law firms. Mr. Odell has broad set of skills and depth in the financial services industry, including bank and securities regulation, investment banking, trading and markets, capital markets, M&A, and finance. Mr. Odell joined Blank Rome from The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), where he served as First Deputy General Counsel since September 22, 2011. As Managing Director and Head of Legal for DTCC, Mr. Odell served as the Primary Legal Advisor to its senior business leaders. He managed bank and securities regulatory matters; executed strategic initiatives and transactions; supervised litigation and investigations; oversaw corporate governance, lobbying, PAC, and government affairs; and focused on privacy and securities projects. While at DTCC, Mr. Odell oversaw FSOC/Dodd-Frank planning, response, and implementation, which resulted in its subsidiaries receiving the first systemically important designations by the Treasury. Prior to DTCC, from 2005 to 2010, Mr. Odell served as General Counsel, Americas of UBS Investment Bank. In this role, he managed the legal and compliance functions and related staff for UBS Investment Bank in the Americas and for all UBS businesses in Latin America. His wide-ranging responsibilities included oversight and management of regulatory matters and relationships; transactional and traded products legal matters; insolvency and workouts; corporate, real estate, and ABS lending; litigation and compliance; lobbying and government relations; and corporate and employment legal matters. Mr. Odell also coordinated M&A support for all significant UBS purchase and sale activity in the Americas region and played a key role in advising on U.S. securities disclosure issues and UBS financing activity. Since 2008, he served as Interim General Counsel of all of UBS and represented it on the Treasury/Federal Reserve Wall Street crisis management team responsible for reviewing alternatives to the Lehman bankruptcy, the sale of Merrill Lynch, the preliminary restructuring steps for AIG, and establishing emergency financing facilities for the industry. Prior to UBS, Mr. Odell served as Global General Counsel of Investment Banking for Citigroups Investment Bank, responsible for supervising the overall provision of legal services to the investment banking department globally and managing all outside counsel engagements and relationships. Mr. Odell focused on equity capital markets; leveraged finance, high yield, and debt capital markets; corporate lending (real estate and ABS); workouts; and M&A. During his time at Citigroup, Mr. Odell was involved in the Google IPO, the Enron and WorldCom bankruptcies, and the equity research Global Settlement. Earlier in his career, he was a Partner of O'Melveny & Meyers LLP and Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue and served as a Senior Associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. He was Chairman of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce (New York). He is a Member of the Board of Advisors for the Institute for Law and Economics, a joint research center of Penn Law, the Wharton School, and the Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He served on the Board of Directors for The Clearing House Association. He was a Trustee of the UBS Americas Fund for Better Government. He was a Member of the Capital Markets Committee of SIA/SIFMA. Admitted to practice in New York, Mr. Odell received his JD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and his BS in Finance from Lehigh University.