William S. Lear
Managing Director, The Chicago Corporation

Mr. Lear has more than thirty years experience in investment banking specializing in providing corporate finance advisory services to middle market companies about how to maximize the value of their enterprises. Specific experience includes private placements, public offerings, and mergers and acquisition engagements on both buy and sell-side. His industry background includes medical services, communications and entertainment, energy, transportation, financial services, printing and publishing.

Prior to co-founding The Chicago Corporation, Mr. Lear had been the Managing Director of FOCUS LLC, a firm specializing in M&A and private placement advisory services to private and closely-held middle market companies. For the six prior years he was EVP and Chief Financial Officer of BioSafe Medical Technologies. Mr. Lear also spent twenty years with The First National Bank of Chicago where he managed the bank’s worldwide banking relationships in the Communications, Entertainment, Energy and Transportation industries as well as the $1BB/year Private Placement Group.

He began his business career with the New York investment banking firm of Hornblower & Weeks: Hemphill, Noyes specializing in Private Placements and Public Offerings of Cable TV and other Telecommunications entities.

Mr. Lear is a member of numerous Boards and Advisory Boards of Directors. Among these are: Geonostics, a medical diagnostics laboratory specializing in the collection, transportation and analysis of blood micro-samples; The Chicago Conservation Center, the largest privately owned art restoration company in the US; Pinpoint Holdings, a diversified communications company with interests in long haul fiber-optics, telephone, wireless services and data centers; and Athena Financial Services, an integrated wealth and risk management advisor.

Mr. Lear holds an undergraduate degree from Yale and received an MBA from Harvard Business School after serving two years as a US Naval Officer. He has been Co-President of the Harvard Business School Club of Chicago and a member of the Board of Directors of the Harvard Business School Alumni Association. He also was a National Trustee with the Leukemia-Lymphoma Society and on the boards of the Better Government Association and Friends of Prentice, a philanthropic organization affiliated with Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Return to Bios Page