Senior Vice President and General Counsel of MAXXAM, Inc. and its Subsidiary corporations, including Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation and The Pacific Lumber Company. In addition to its major aluminum and timber interests, MAXXAM, then a Fortune 500 company, operated and developed real estate across the sunbelt from Puerto Rico to Arizona and owned and operated, through other subsidiaries, Texas' first Class One racing facility, Sam Houston Race Park.
Earlier, as Commissioner of Corporations of the State of California, he was responsible for administering 12 separate business regulatory laws through offices in four cities. Commissioner Pierno led a successful effort to prepare and enact the Franchise Investment Law, the first law in the nation to deal expressly with what was then a significant regulatory problem. This legislation, which he sponsored jointly with the California Attorney General, served as the early model for the Federal Trade Commission's Franchise Rule and for many of the laws enacted by other states. Pierno was also instrumental in preparing and having enacted legislation modernizing seven other of the laws under the jurisdiction of the Department, and was actively involved in the preparation and enactment of California's Corporate Securities Law of 1968, then a major innovation. He sponsored other major new laws for California. Among them was one which (pre-ERISA) created a new Retirement Systems Disclosure Law, eliminating an outmoded and troublesome prior law, and another which established a privately-funded guarantee fund to protect depositors in industrial loan companies.
Former Partner and Head of the Business Practice group in the Los Angeles office of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro.
As Chairman of the Committee on Corporations of the State Bar of California (1971-1975), he conceived and managed a project to write and enact a new General Corporation Law for the State of California, which effort reached fruition when the new law went into effect on January 1, 1977.
Additional Positions, Activities and Honors:
Chairman, Board of Investment of the State of California
Executive Committee and Chairman of the Conference Committee and of the Uniform Securities Act Revision Committee of the North American Securities Administrators Association
Chairman of Governor Ronald Reagan's Task Force on Higher Education
California Attorney General's Volunteer Advisory Committee
Advisory Board of the New York Institute of Finance (Law Division)
National Arbitration Committee of the NASD
Member of the California Secretary of State's Citizens' Advisory Committee
Executive Committee of the Business Law Section of the State Bar of California
Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, Awarded by Whittier College, May, 2000
Chairman, Franchise Committee of the California State Bar
Los Angeles County Children's Services Commission
Director & President of ICAN Associates, Los Angeles
Member, Texas' Committee of Twelve (a group that played a significant role in bringing about judicial reform in Texas)
