Ray has more than 35 years of experience helping clients achieve their business goals by providing practical solutions to their commercial issues, while deploying the technical knowledge that such areas as mergers and acquisitions, securities regulation, and intellectual property licensing require. Ray’s clients have ranged from individual entrepreneurs and investors, venture capital and hedge funds, technology startups, substantial privately held institutional and family businesses, and the largest publicly traded companies. Ray concentrates his practice in mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, entity formation and securities law compliance, licensing of software, proprietary industrial processes and other intellectual property, and other general commercial law, including employment agreements and independent contractor hiring, equipment financing, and long-term supply arrangements.
Ray has been listed in Chambers as a leading lawyer for corporate, mergers and acquisitions, and securities law for Pennsylvania, from 2012 through 2019. In a 2014 interview, Ray's clients told Chambers “He did a magnificent job; he produced a great work product efficiently, in a timely manner and at an appropriate cost.”
Ray’s industry engagements have included companies operating in many areas, such as enterprise software and smartphone applications, life sciences, and many consumer products (in electronics, food and beverages, wine and spirits, and a wide array of biotech molecules and applications, medical devices, and medical marijuana). He also has significant experience in industrial component production, defense contracting, mining, and real estate development. A substantial portion of Ray’s practice involves representations of non-U.S. individuals and entities that do business or acquire assets in the United States, as well as transactions for U.S. companies that involve significant cross-border elements, with experience in M&A and securities work in the U.K., France, Germany, Japan, China, Poland, Russia, and South America.
Ray has also served as lead counsel for issuers and underwriters for initial public offerings and secondary public offerings on the NYSE and the Nasdaq Stock Market, as well as all manner of private placements, under both U.S. SEC-issued Regulation D for U.S. domestic offerings and Regulation S for off-shore offerings, including preferred stock, founders’ stock, convertible debt, complex LLC operating agreements, and stock options, together with private investments in public equity (PIPES). He has also counseled public company clients and special committees of their boards regarding aspects of ongoing securities law reporting compliance, including Sarbanes-Oxley, and with respect to corporate governance on consideration of management or competing bidder buyout bids and advice to audit and compensations committees.
Ray earned his bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, from Yale University and his law degree, with honors, from Columbia Law School.