Jonathan D. Joseph is the firm’s Founder and Chair of its Corporate Finance, Banking and Financial Services Practice. He is peer review rated by Martindale-Hubbell as AV Preeminent®, a distinction awarded to a small fraction of attorneys for the highest level of professional excellence, communication skills and ethical standards.
Mr. Joseph brings over four decades of legal experience representing banks, credit unions, money transmitters and other financial services and fintech organizations with their most complex business, litigation and strategic imperatives including mergers and acquisitions, regulatory and enforcement matters, succession planning, corporate governance including board and audit committees, equity and debt offerings, corporate and governmental investigations, D & O insurance coverage and director and officer indemnification.
Mr. Joseph began practicing law in 1979 at just 23 years old, joining a Los Angeles-based banking law boutique. In 1983, he moved to San Francisco to launch the firm’s San Francisco office, where he played a key role in expanding the firm to approximately 50 attorneys in just seven years.
By 1990, Mr. Joseph’s track record of success attracted the attention of Rodney Peck, a renowned corporate and banking industry attorney, who recruited him to join the San Francisco office of Pillsbury Madison & Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP) as a partner in the Corporate Securities and Financial Institutions Group. At that time, Mr. Joseph was one of only four lateral partners to have joined Pillsbury, which had been founded over a century prior. Mr. Joseph spent the next 13 years representing numerous publicly held banks, bank holding companies and other financial institutions and investment banks in connection with mergers, underwritten and private offerings, corporate governance, bank regulatory and enforcement and similar matters. In 1995-96, he opened Pillsbury’s New York City office in Lower Manhattan, where he represented a global investment banking and securities firm to create one of the earliest commercial loan securitization platforms in the world.
Following his tenure at Pillsbury Law, Mr. Joseph joined K&L Gates LLP (then known as Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP) in 2003 as a partner in their Corporate and Investment Management Group.
In 2006, Mr. Joseph embarked on a new chapter by founding the boutique law firm that has become Joseph, Cohen & Del Vecchio, PC. Building on his prior law firm and managerial experiences, his vision for the firm was to deliver the highest caliber of professional services typically found only at AmLaw 100 firms, with a more agile, creative and solution-focused approach tailored to client needs.
Since his remarkable early start and over forty-five years of practice, Mr. Joseph has become a preeminent banking and corporate attorney in California and nationally, well known for his creativity, skill and judgment and relentless determination to achieve the objectives of his clients. He has a successful track record advising Board Chairs, Boards of Directors and CEOs in mergers and acquisitions, defending corporate takeovers, raising capital, succession planning, corporate governance matters and strategic negotiations. He has assisted clients in consummating billions of dollars in corporate and investment transactions during his career.
Mr. Joseph also represents credit unions, fintech firms, private equity and venture capital firms. He often acts as lead or special counsel in connection with federal and state bank and credit union regulatory, enforcement and litigation matters.
A core specialty of Mr. Joseph involves advising directors and officers of troubled and/or failed banks and defending them in connection with civil enforcement actions brought by federal or state banking regulators. He is also a trusted resource for executive recruiters seeking insight and counsel on placing executive leadership in financial institutions.
Mr. Joseph served on the California State Bar’s Financial Institutions Committee from 2009 through 2014 and acted as the Committee’s Chair from 2013 to 2014. He is a member of the State Bar of California, State Bar of New York and American Bar Association.
Mr. Joseph earned his Juris Doctor degree from the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Missouri, where he interned for Professor F. Hodge O’Neal, the George Alexander Madill Professor of Corporate Law, and was a contributing writer of the 1979 Supplement to Professor O’Neal’s seminal work: “Squeeze-Outs” of Minority Shareholders: Expulsion or Oppression of Business Associates, Chicago: Callaghan, c1975.
Mr. Joseph’s professional interests also extend into the arts. In 2005, he founded an art gallery in San Francisco specializing in postmodern art and photography. He also served as a trustee of the San Francisco based American Conservatory Theater Foundation (A.C.T.) for six years.
