Hugh Burns has been counseling clients on their most significant and complex financial communications issues for over twenty years. He has extensive experience with mergers, acquisitions and other financial transactions, shareholder activist defense, crisis and reputational issues, litigation support, restructurings, earnings warnings and restatements, and executive changes. Hugh also has managed many long-term corporate positioning and investor relations programs. He has advised clients in virtually all industries, including real estate, energy, healthcare, technology, financial services, industrial and retail companies, as well as private equity firms and their portfolio companies.

Before co-founding Reevemark, Hugh was a Partner at Sard Verbinnen & Co., where he also served as the firm’s General Counsel and member of its Executive Management Committee. Hugh began his career as a litigation attorney, first at Sullivan & Cromwell and later at Latham & Watkins.

Hugh received his A.B. from Princeton University and his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, where he graduated cum laude, received the Order of the Coif and served as an Associate Editor of the Fordham Law Review.

Hugh was selected as one of Lawdragon’s Global 100 Leaders in Legal Strategy & Consulting from 2021-2024 and ranked by Chambers and Partners in 2022 and 2023 as a leader in the area of litigation support communications.

Representative client engagements include:

• Dominion Voting Systems on its defamation case against Fox;
• First Republic Bank’s Executive Chairman on issues relating to the bank’s FDIC’s receivership;
• Chesapeake Utilities on its acquisition of Florida City Gas;
• Haveli Investments on its strategic partnership with Apollo and acquisition of Certinia;
• Simon Property Group’s acquisition of Taubman Centers;
• Confidential support on DOJ and civil opioid litigation for multiple clients;
• Tinder co-founders in their lawsuit against and $441 million settlement with Match Group and IAC; and
• Chapter 11 proceedings for Gulfport Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Payless ShoeSource and Bristow Group.