Executive Vice President and General Counsel
Curtis S. Shaw is Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Styron, a leading global materials company dedicated to innovate and deliver for its customers. He is responsible for all legal affairs for Styron and is a member of the Styron Executive Leadership Team.
Shaw brings to Styron a 35-year career as an accomplished corporate lawyer with extensive experience in the global chemicals and materials industry, specializing in mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, public offerings, financings, and federal securities and antitrust law.
He began his career in private practice in New York, New York at Mudge Rose Guthrie & Alexander from 1973 to 1975 and at Shearman & Sterling from 1976 to 1980. Shaw joined Olin Corporation in 1980 as Senior Counsel, Corporate Development, and was responsible for general commercial representation, including mergers and acquisitions, antitrust, securities regulation and contract review.
From 1983 to 1988, Shaw served as Associate General Counsel, and thereafter as Vice President and General Counsel of the Electrochemicals, Detergents & Specialty Chemicals Division, at Occidental Chemical Corporation. He then served as Corporate Counsel at NYNEX Corporation from 1988 to 1996, where he oversaw a broad range of transactional work, including securities offerings, financings, mergers, acquisitions, dispositions and joint ventures and helped position the company for major transactions.
In 1997, Shaw was named Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary for Charter Communications, Inc., St. Louis, Missouri, and assumed overall accountability for all legal matters affecting Charter, which subsequently became the nation’s third largest multi-system operator of broadband cable systems. In 2003, he was promoted to Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary.
He next joined Celanese Corporation, Dallas, Texas, serving as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary from 2005 to 2009. At Celanese, Shaw held responsibility for all legal matters and participated in overall corporate strategy and planning. Shaw also led negotiations and transactions to transition Celanese from private equity ownership, coordinated financial strategies that enabled Celanese to become a fully independent public corporation, and provided legal guidance in connection with major debt restructuring efforts.
Shaw received a J.D. Degree from Columbia University School of Law in 1973, and B.A. Degree with honors in Economics from Trinity College in 1970.
Shaw joined Styron following its sale by The Dow Chemical Company to Bain Capital Partners in June 2010.
