Edward W. Ahart
ewa@spsk.com

Edward W. Ahart is a partner with Schenck, Price, Smith & King’s Business Law Department, and has chaired both the Department and the Corporate Practice Group. He practices primarily as a business attorney, concentrating in advising businesses and business owners or officers on governance and entity structural issues, transactions including mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, finance, and business contracts. He served as the firm’s Managing Partner and Chair of its Management Committee for approximately twenty years and has recently relinquished that role to assume the position of Chairman of the Firm.

Mr. Ahart has extensive experience in business counseling, structuring entities in governance issues and in transactions, including the purchase, sale and financing of businesses and related commercial transactions, the structuring and restructuring, negotiating and closing of complex asset and stock sales and acquisitions. He has represented numerous financial institutions, both large and small, and has served as acting general counsel to counsel to Hooper Holmes, Inc., a publicly traded company, and outside counsel to Duke Farms Foundation, the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, Basking Ridge Golf Club, Inc, Allied Oil, Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of New Jersey (the “IIABNJ”), Millington Quarry, Inc. and Damon G. Douglas, Inc. in general corporate matters. Mr. Ahart has been listed in “Who’s Who,” and “Who's Who in American Law” and has been recognized by New Jersey Monthly magazine as one of New Jersey’s “Super Lawyers”. He is a frequent speaker on corporate governance, transactional and financing matters and is an active participant in the Rothman Institute of Entrepreneurial Studies at Fairleigh Dickenson University. He also speaks often at programs sponsored by the IIABNJ on issues of interest to insurance agents, and a considerable percentage of his practice is comprised of the representation of closely held and family-owned businesses, including many insurance agencies.

Active in the community, Mr. Ahart is the Chair of the Lafayette College Board of Trustees and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the College. He also served as the President of the Lafayette College Alumni Association. Recently, Mr. Ahart was elected as a Trustee of the Fannie E. Ripple Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation committed to serving as a catalyst for new ways of thinking about our national health system - to achieve better health, better care and lower costs. For several years Mr. Ahart was the Chair of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. He is currently a member of both its Executive Committee and the Morris Business Cabinet. He is the former President and a member of the Board of Governors of The Morristown Club. He has been the Vice President and a member of the Harkers Hollow Golf and Country Club Board of Directors and is active in various other organizations. He acted as the attorney for Pohatcong Township in Warren County as well as its Board of Education. He was also Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Warren County ARC. In addition, Mr. Ahart has served as an Elder and President of the Board of Trustees of the Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Stewartsville, and President of the Greenwich Cemetery Association. The Association has a large endowment program, substantial staff, diverse Board of Trustees, and has been engaged in a multimillion dollar planning and development process. Mr. Ahart is a member of the Morris County and American Bar Associations, Business Law and Practice Management Sections. He has served on the New Jersey District X Ethics Committee, and the Board of Directors in the Morris Essex Inn of Transactional Counsel.

After receiving an undergraduate degree with honors from Lafayette College in 1969, Mr. Ahart attended the Cornell Law School where he was graduated in 1972. Prior to joining Schenck, Price, Smith & King, LLP in 1973, he served as Law Secretary to the Honorable Joseph Halpern, Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division.

Bar Admissions:

• New Jersey (1972)
• New York (1983)