Senior Vice President and General Counsel of MAXXAM, Inc.; Subsidiary corporations, including Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation and The Pacific Lumber Company. In addition to its major aluminum and timber interests, MAXXAM, a fortune 500 company, operates and develops real estate across the sunbelt from Puerto Rico to Arizona and owns and operates, through other subsidiaries, Texas' first Class One racing facility, Sam Houston Race Park.

Former Commissioner of Corporations of the State of California. 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.

Former Chairman of the Committee on Corporations of the State Bar of California (1971-1975), he conceived and managed a project to revise the General Corporation Law of the State of California, which effort reached fruition when the new law went intoeffect on January 1, 1977.

Former Positions:

Board of Finance 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

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 recent judicial reform in Texas)