People
Charles Prescott
IMR World US Representative
Charles A. Prescott is an experienced international lawyer, government affairs expert, and non-profit association executive. A cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School (‘74), he has spent his career in international corporate, securities, finance, and new country development law and projects. From 1974 to 1976 he worked and lived in Tokyo where he was the resident foreign legal consultant to Hamada and Matsumoto, one of Tokyo’s leading securities law firms. Thereafter he was based in New York with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton where he specialized in general corporate and finance work, including tender offer litigation. From 1979 to 1989 he was with privately-owned Continental Grain Company where he practiced in the areas of complex leveraged lease transactions, commodities and maritime law, and international foreign investment and trade law. He participated in complex joint venture negotiations in many countries, including China, Nigeria and Yugoslavia. During his last four years with Continental he served as Vice President and Chief Counsel of ContiTrade Services Corporation, an NASD-registered broker-dealer and specialty-finance subsidiary, where he established the legal function to provide advice on legal issues relating to structured financial products and interest-rate and foreign exchange futures trading.
In 1989 he joined The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. as Vice President and Associate General Counsel and established an international legal risk control system. He defended litigation in foreign courts, supervised delivery of legal services to overseas subsidiaries, and managed legal aspects of launching new operations in ten countries, including Central and Eastern Europe, South America, Korea, India and Thailand. He was directly responsible for legal and government affairs issues affecting the company’s business in Central Europe, South America, and South and East Asia. In addition, Mr. Prescott served as government affairs representative on issues relating to privacy, data protection, and foreign investment. He served as the company’s representative to the US-Russia Business Council, the Council of the Americas, and the U.S. Council for International Business, where he served as Chair of the Working Party on Privacy and Transborder Data Flows.
Mr. Prescott joined the US Direct Marketing Association in 1998 as Vice President, International Business Development, and was responsible for developing programs to serve the growing international needs of its US membership, to promote international membership, and to act as liaison and “Global Ambassador” to other DMA’s around the world, as well as its representative in international bodies. He has been the primary mover in developing the agenda and meetings of the International Federation of Direct Marketing Associations, which now has over 24 national members.
Mr. Prescott also served until recently on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Federation of European Direct and Interactive Marketing in Brussels, the industry’s primary spokesperson in Brussels.
In 2004 at the Bucharest Universal Postal Union Congress he was elected as the first Chairman of the newly-established Consultative Committee which represents the private sector before that important UN body. This followed four years’ of debate at the UPU in the High Level Group, in which he actively participated. He was re-elected as Chairman at the Nairobi Congress of 2008 by acclamation.
CONTACT
Charles A. Prescott, JD – Law & Direct Marketing
charles@imrworld.org
