Chuck Berman has over 35 years of experience representing and advising financial institutions and other publicly and privately owned business organizations (and their senior executives), acting in the role of an "outside" general counsel and as a resource for clients with limited in-house legal capacity. He is experienced in the areas of commercial lending, corporate and regulatory work and mergers and acquisitions and capital raises. Chuck also counsels clients on the transmission of wealth and on business succession issues. He led a team in negotiating and closing a series of commercial bank acquisitions in New Jersey, for a bank holding company seeking to rapidly expand its franchise. He represents several major New Jersey banks in real estate and commercial and industrial lending transactions.Chuck also represents investment banks in their roles as underwriters or placement agents for capital raises for regional and community banks. Before Sherman Wells, Chuck's initial training was at the firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City, where his career in banking law was launched, representing money center banks in loan and corporate transactions. He subsequently led a boutique banking firm in Summit, New Jersey, for several years, before returning to the large firm arena, in order to make a more extensive platform of services available to his banking clients.