Dale L. Ponikvar

Dale Ponikvar just retired as the senior corporate tax partner in the New York office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy where he headed the Corporate and Financial Restructuring Group in the firm's Tax Department.

Mr. Ponikvar’s practice focused on the tax aspects of mergers, acquisitions, cross-border transactions, corporate restructurings and outsourcing transactions.  During his 35 year career Mr. Ponikvar represented clients that included many of the country’s leading financial institutions, such as JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of Tokyo, JBIC, Banco Itau, Credit Suisse, and AIG, numerous funds, such as Cerberus, Harbinger, Anchorage, Aristeia, and Oaktree, the NYSE, the AMEX, significant global corporate clients such as British Telecom, Grupo Mexico, Iberdrola, Remington Arms, Scottish Power, Flick, Pechiney.  He was the lead tax lawyer to the Official Committee of Creditors in each of the Lehman Brothers, Enron, Refco, and Maxwell Communications bankruptcies and played the role of Debtor’s tax counsel in the epic demise of Long Term Capital Management.

Mr. Ponikvar is a past member of the Executive Committee of the Tax Section of the New York State Bar Association and was the Co-Chair of its Committee on Corporate Reorganizations and the Co-Chair of its Committee on Bankruptcies. He was a member of the prestigious Tax Council of Bar of the City of New York.  He is Vice-Chair of the Tax Section of the Public Utility, Communication and Transportation Committee of the American Bar Association.  He has been listed in Chambers USA since its appearance.  He is a member of the Harvard Tax Club.

Mr. Ponikvar is a member of the Board and Legal Counsel to the American Council on Germany and is the US Chairman of its Business Advisory Committee. Mr. Ponikvar is also a member of the Board of Governors of the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, from which he holds an MA degree in philosophy.  He is Chairman of the Singers Forum Foundation, board member of the Lar Dance Company, and is active with several other tax-exempt arts and education oriented organizations.

When still a teenager, Mr. Ponikvar attended a gymnasium in Hamburg, Germany as an AFS exchange student.  While obtaining his BA at Yale, he spent his junior year studying philosophy at La Sorbonne in Paris.  He is fluent in German and French and conversant in Italian.  Mr. Ponikvar obtained his law degree from NYU.