Steve has practised corporate and securities law throughout his career at major law firms in New York and Toronto, took a working sabbatical in 1998 as a principal at private equity firm Royal Bank Equity Partners and since 1999 has been a partner at Fasken, a 900 lawyer international law firm. Steve co-founded Fasken’s ESG & Sustainability group and spends substantial time advising on ESG matters.
Steve also is the Chair, ESG at Middlefield, a Canadian investment manager.
From 2011 to 2018 Steve was the Executive Director of the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance (CCGG), whose members are institutional investors across Canada which collectively manage over $5 trillion of assets. As Executive Director of CCGG, Steve created and debated public policy positions in relation to ESG issues and led over 85 ESG engagement meetings between CCGG and directors of public companies across Canada. The Directors’ E&S Guidebook was the final publication issued by CCGG during Steve’s tenure.
Steve has spoken and written widely and has been interviewed by television, radio and newspaper reporters on numerous ESG topics. The press have called Steve’s writing “insightful” and “prescient” and have referred to Steve as “a leading governance expert”, “a leading practitioner in the Canadian fund industry” and one of “Canada’s top M&A attorneys”. Global Proxy Watch named Steve one of the “10 people around the world who have had the most impact on corporate governance” in 2016.
Steve is a director of the RIA and a director and past President of the Harvard Business School Club of Toronto and was the inaugural Co-Chair of the Global Network of Investor Associations. He also is a member of the Institute of Corporate Directors and the Global Stewardship Committee (and prior thereto the Shareholder Rights Committee) of the International Corporate Governance Network.
Steve is a member of the New York and Ontario bars. He has law degrees from University of Toronto and New York University, an M.B.A. from Harvard University, the Responsible Investment Professional Certification from the RIA and the certificate in Sustainable Capitalism & ESG from UC Berkeley Law.