BILL COSDEN, ESQ.

Senior Managing Director & General Counsel

 

Bill Cosden provides clients with extraordinary strategic advice on corporate governance, crisis management and communications, due diligence, compliance and regulation, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) related advice, creditor negotiations and restructuring.  He is also general counsel for EM Capital Management.  

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Bill is co-founder of the annual Stanford Ecommerce Best Practices Conference. 

 

Bill is a legal executive with broad technology, communications, and energy industry experience. Previously, Bill served as Vice President & General Counsel of Active Technologies, Inc., a web-based (ASP) Incentive Management software startup. Prior to that he was the Director of Legal Affairs, for Beyond.com, an E-Commerce services provider where he provided and managed legal services, including Finance, for E-Commerce stores operating in 6 continents, 10 languages, and 15 currencies.   

 

Prior to Beyond.com, Bill was Corporate Counsel for 10 years with the Pacific, Gas & Electric Company where his responsibilities included antitrust, commercial, environmental and tort litigation, commercial and real estate transactions, insurance coverage, unlawful business practices defense, and internal investigations and regulatory compliance.

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Prior to PG&E, Bill was a Senior Deputy District Attorney with the Alameda County (CA) District Attorney’s Office. There his responsibilities included civil and criminal white-collar and environmental enforcement, and prosecution of unlawful business practices under California Business & Professions Code §17200. Bill is past President of the Association of Corporate Counsel’s (“ACC”) San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, and a past Chair of ACC’s National Environmental Law Committee. He is a frequent speaker, including ACC National Meetings and the National Association of Corporate Directors (“NACD”) programs.

Bill received a J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law and a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley