William S. Lear
Managing Partner, Focus, LLC - Midwest Region

William S. Lear, a FOCUS Managing Partner, Midwest Region, is responsible for the firm’s business in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri. Mr. Lear has more than thirty years experience in corporate finance, specializing in advising companies about how to better articulate their business strategy to the financial markets, identify sources of capital and structure and price private placement securities.

Prior to joining FOCUS, for the last three years at Bridge Investment Corporation, Mr. Lear worked extensively with small- to medium-sized companies, helping them “find a voice” in a crowded and confusing financial market place. Successful mandates include advising on a $5 million rights offering for a bio-tech company and representing the 15 percent owner/employee of a service company in a multi-million dollar purchase of the founder’s 85 percent interest.

Previously, Mr. Lear was executive vice president and chief financial officer of BioSafe Medical Technologies, raising almost $20 million in capital which enabled the Company to become the world’s only laboratory able to produce a platform of highly accurate diagnostics using micro blood samples self-collected at home or work. Mr. Lear also spent twenty years with the First National Bank of Chicago and, prior to that, five years in investment banking with Hornblower & Weeks: Hemphill, Noyes.

Mr. Lear has an undergraduate degree from Yale, an MBA from Harvard Business School and served two years as an Officer in the Navy. He recently completed twelve years as a National Trustee with the Leukemia-Lymphoma Society and two years as Co-President of the Harvard Business School Club of Chicago. He is on the Boards of the Better Government Association and the Friends of Prentice, the woman’s hospital at Northwestern Memorial.

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