Steven Scolari provides practical and strategic legal and business advice to executives and owners of both private and public businesses in connection with a variety of transactional matters, as well as business succession planning engagements, in a wide scope of industries.
Steve’s transactional experience includes mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity financings, joint ventures, and corporate restructurings and reorganizations. He has worked with companies in industries including management and food concession services; manufacturing, including food products, recycled rubber products and aerospace suppliers; distribution, including laminated products, pipes, values, fittings and gaskets; healthcare, including continuing care facilities and physician practice groups; and other service businesses, including HVAC and refrigeration, patient service technology, commercial mechanical services, contract research, food processing, banking and financial services (including investment advisory and management), logistics, architectural and animal health.
As co-chair of Stradley Ronon’s closely held and family-owned businesses practice, Steve's business succession planning engagements encompass corporate, tax, estate planning and family issues, including complex intergenerational shareholder and voting trust agreements. Additionally, he provides general corporate counseling for institutional and privately held corporate clients, and he represents both sellers and buyers of naming rights and other sponsorship rights connected with sports, entertainment and university facilities. Steve has also served as a mediator of closely held business owner disputes.
Featured Representative Matters
Represented the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, a nonprofit performing arts center based in Philadelphia, in its 12-year naming rights sponsorship agreement with Highmark Health. The agreement will rebrand the outdoor music destination as the Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts.
Represented Allied Resources Group (ARG), a multidisciplinary provider of engineering, staffing, inspection and field services, in several acquisitions of companies that build and maintain the infrastructure that keeps our world connected, including next-generation data centers.
A clinical trial concierge services provider in an acquisition by an innovator of software solutions for clinical trials backed by one of the largest software investors in the world.
A producer and distributor of novelty ice cream products in the acquisition of a controlling interest by a private investment firm.
Citizens Bank’s 25-year, $95 million naming rights, advertising and sponsorship agreement with the Philadelphia Phillies, and also: (1) the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in connection with the sale of naming rights to its main house pavilion to TD Bank; (2) the owners of eight sport and entertainment facilities in the United States in connection with their sale of naming rights for such venues; (3) numerous public assembly facilities for the pouring rights and concession agreements at those venues; and (4) Saint Joseph’s University for the sale of corporate sponsorships for its Division I athletic program and the pouring rights agreement for the university.
A newly created holding company with passive and management equity investors to acquire a couple of commercial mechanical services companies from the parent company, growing them and then selling them five years later with the realization of an over-seven-fold increase in value for the owners.
A domestic and international contract research organization’s acquisition via merger of another pharmaceutical services company to expand the organization’s scope of services in the new drug field.
An investment management company’s closing of a minority investment in its organization by a major international institutional financial services company.
A closely held manufacturing business that increased its revenues by 2,000% in four years via leveraged acquisitions, which included the negotiation and drafting of the acquisition agreements, as well as senior and mezzanine debt financing documentation.
A domestic purveyor of meat products in its merger with a strategic competitor, creating a vertically integrated, national supplier of such products.
Penn State Alumni Association’s multiyear extension of its affinity credit card and deposit account program with Bank of America.
Numerous closely held business owners in a wide variety of industries (including multigenerational family-owned businesses, recycled rubber products, distribution, continuing care facilities, physician practice groups, architecture, food processing and human resource consulting); mapping out and implementing their business succession plans, which include a sale of the business (to strategic or financial buyers or to key management personnel) or passing equity onto the next generation while maintaining control of the company; and working closely with those owners to address complicated intergenerational issues in connection with those transactions.
Community Impact
Steve is a former member of the Executive Committee and former chairman of the board of directors for the Main Line Chamber of Commerce. He participated in the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce’s inaugural, six-month Growth Collaborative Initiative with other regional professionals and nonprofit executives. He is also a former member of the Youth Education Steering Committee and chair of the board of trustees for St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Devon, Pennsylvania, and recently completed a 15-month engagement on St. John’s transformation implementation team.
Memberships
Member, American Bar Association, Business Law Section
Former Member, Board of Directors, Southeastern Pennsylvania Chambers Political Action Committee
Former Member, Executive Committee; Former Chairman, Board of Directors, Main Line Chamber of Commerce
Member, Forum on the Entertainment & Sports Industries, American Bar Association
Member, Pennsylvania Bar Association, Business Law Section
Recognitions
Legal Elite, SmartCEO Magazine
Chairman’s Award, Main Line Chamber of Commerce (2008)
