Linda E. Rappaport

Linda Rappaport is Of Counsel at Shearman & Sterling LLP in New York City. She is a former practice group leader of the Compensation, Governance & ERISA/Private Client Group as well as a founding member of the firm’s Corporate Governance Advisory Group. Her practice focuses on all aspects of executive compensation and benefits, including corporate, securities, and tax laws and related corporate governance and regulatory matters. She has broad experience in the design and implementation of executive incentive programs and in the negotiation and preparation of executive employment contracts and severance arrangements, with an emphasis on the financial services and entertainment industries. Her practice also encompasses all compensation, benefits, and related governance issues associated with corporate acquisitions, divestitures, public offerings, restructurings, and bankruptcies.

Ms. Rappaport has a special focus on the representation of global, U.S., and non-U.S. companies and their boards of directors and compensation committees in corporate governance matters, including CEO succession, public disclosure, and executive compensation. She also represents individual executives of public companies and private enterprises.

Active in lecturing, Ms. Rappaport is the author of numerous articles on a variety of corporate governance and executive compensation issues. She has been ranked Band 1 for Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation: New York in Chambers USA since 2007.

Ms. Rappaport became a partner of Shearman & Sterling in 1985. She has served three terms as an elected member of the firm’s Policy Committee through 2014 and has been a member of the firm’s Executive Group. She is also a founding member and advisor of the firm’s Women’s Initiative For Success, Excellence and Retention (WISER) and a member of its Diversity Committee and the firm’s Hiring Partner. Before joining the firm in 1979, she served as a law clerk to Chief Judge James S. Holden, U.S. District Court of the District of Vermont, from 1978 to 1979.