Bruce Buck

Bruce M. Buck is a founding managing partner of the London office of U.S. law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (J.D., Columbia University 1970; B.A., Colgate University 1967). He is also Chairman of Chelsea Football Club. His practice areas are European Union/international competition, European mergers & acquisitions, project finance and capital markets work, and privatizations.

Career

Bruce Buck has been practicing law in Europe since 1983. He left New York for England in 1983 for a “standard tour of duty” of two or three years with his previous law firm White & Case. Five years later he was headhunted by M&A specialists Skadden Arps to develop the firm's European practice from scratch. He has stayed on ever since.

As the partner in charge of Skadden's European offices, his work includes a broad range of transactions in the capital markets area. Buck represents both European and non-European clients in a full range of cross border financing transactions, generally in connection with equity offerings or high-yield and other debt financings. Reputedly 'the driest wit in law', according to the industry magazine "The Lawyer", Buck is a veritable trove of quotable quotes:

I am supposed to be in charge of all Skadden, Arps' European offices. But you know how it is: no-one listens to me in the office, no-one listens to me at home. It's slightly different now I have the Chelsea connection: they all want tickets.

Buck’s involvement with Chelsea began through his position as European head of the American law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Skadden Arps specialises in mergers, acquisitions and capital market transactions, and Buck had personally done legal work on a number of acquisitions for the Russian company Siberian Oil (Sibneft), through which he came to advise Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Abramovich was formerly the majority shareholder in Sibneft.

A sports fan all his life, it didn’t take long for him to be captivated by English football. As an acquisitions veteran, however, the £140 million acquisition of all of the outstanding shares of the London Stock Exchange-listed company Chelsea Village plc is his first experience of taking over a football club.

Buck has been a Chelsea fan since the late 1980s, and a season ticket holder since the early 1990s. He is the only shareholder in Chelsea apart from Roman Abramovich; he owns one share and Abramovich owns eighty-four million. He keeps a fairly low profile, letting chief executive Peter Kenyon be the public face of the off-pitch side of the club. Many see him as a "puppet chairman" as Abramovich enjoys a much greater input into the team.

Buck is married with three sons, Graham, Brandon, and Rory, all of whom are Chelsea fans.

External links

* [http://www.skadden.com/index.cfm?contentID=45&bioID=1256 Bruce Buck's biography on Skadden, Arps's web site]
* [http://http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/01/28/ccprof28.xml "An American Blueprint for success" from "Telegraph" newspaper online] January 28, 2006