Alton B. Harris

Al is a founding partner of Ungaretti & Harris and chairs the Firm’s Financial Services Group. He was a consultant to the Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Federal Securities Code. During the early 1970s, Al served as counsel to the Subcommittee on Securities of the Senate Banking Committee and was the principal draftsman of the Securities Acts Amendments of 1975. In this capacity, he was responsible for the review and evaluation of all proposed changes to the federal securities laws and was actively involved in the jurisdictional controversies between the SEC and the CFTC related to the passage and aftermath of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act of 1974.

Al is a frequent writer and lecturer on the financial markets, financial regulation, and corporate governance. He is an adjunct professor of law at Northwestern University Law School, where he teaches courses on the regulation of derivative products and the financial markets. He also has served as an adjunct professor in the Graduate Program in Financial Services Law at IIT – Chicago Kent College of Law, where he taught courses on the regulation of money managers.

His practice focuses on:

The regulation of financial institutions, financial products, and financial services
Corporate governance and finance

- View All - News
Ungaretti & Harris Involved in Three Major Deals
Ungaretti & Harris Represents Wilton Industries in Three-Party $1.15 Billion Deal
- View All - Publications
Corporate Governance: Pre-Enron and Post-Enron co-written by Andrea S. Kramer Corporate Aftershock: The Public Policy Lessons from the Collapse of Enron and Other Major Corporations “Corporate governance” is the process by which a corporation’s management is held accountable to its residual owners - the stockholders. Because of Enron and scores of other corporations currently embroiled in accounting and managerial scandals, the New York Stock Exchange (NSYE) and the Nasdaq Stock Market (NASDAQ) have approved sweeping new listing standards and the Congress has enacted wide-ranging federal legislation - the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 20021 - that will profoundly affect the nature of and control over corporate governance in the United States.
Credit Derivatives Post-Enron co-written by Andrea S. Kramer Corporate Aftershock: The Public Policy Lessons from the Collapse of Enron and Other Major Corporations Credit derivatives – bilateral contracts and debt securities the value of which is linked to the credit status of a company, a debt obligation, or a pool of debt obligations – have been available since 1992.1 The importance and frequency of use of these products, however, were transformed by the events of 2001.

Distinctions

Illinois Super Lawyers – Banking & Financial (2005-2008)
Named by The National Law Journal as one of the 50 outstanding securities lawyers in the United States

Presentations

Presenter: Corporate Governance, University of Chicago, GSB Seminar, June 30, 2004
Presenter, “Single Stock Futures: A Guide to Analyzing a Brand New Stock Product,” University of Chicago, GSB Finance Roundtable

Memberships

American Law Institute
American Bar Association’s Committee on Securities Regulation
American Bar Foundation
Former Member, Legal Advisory Board of the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc.

Civic

Past Chairman and current member of the Board of Trustees of Columbia College Chicago
Board of Directors of the Illinois Humanities Council