Derrick D. Cephas

Derrick Cephas is a New York-based partner in Weil's Corporate Department and the head of the firm's Financial Institutions Regulatory practice group. Mr. Cephas maintains a broad-based practice representing commercial banks, thrift institutions, bank holding companies, and foreign banking corporations in a wide range of regulatory and transactional matters, including traditional lending, strategic planning, general regulatory and compliance issues, acquisitions and dispositions, formation of de novo banks, product development, defense of bank regulatory enforcement actions, risk management and internal controls issues, issuance of debt and equity securities, obtaining regulatory authority to exercise expanded powers, officer and director fiduciary duty issues, and the negotiation of and compliance with supervisory orders.Prior to joining Weil, Mr. Cephas served as President and Chief Executive Officer of New York-based Amalgamated Bank. Before this executive role, he was a banking and corporate law partner in the New York office of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Prior to Cadwalader, Mr. Cephas served as the Superintendent of Banks for the State of New York (1991-94). While Superintendent of Banks, he was nationally recognized for his leadership in several areas of bank regulatory reform, including the creation and implementation of a more rational and hospitable regulatory and supervisory environment for foreign banks to do business in the United States, the revision of regulations governing the conversion of mutual thrift institutions to stock form, and the enactment of interstate branch-banking legislation.Mr. Cephas has significant experience in public policy matters relating to the banking industry. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Dime Savings Bank of New York and Merrill Lynch International Bank and is currently a director of D.E. Shaw & Co. Inc. and the Fresh Air Fund. He has testified numerous times before the New York State Legislature, the U.S. Congress, financial institutions, regulatory bodies and other similar bodies.Mr. Cephas graduated from Harvard College in 1975 and from Harvard Law School in 1979.