John E Merow

John E. Merow, a former chairman of the venerable Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, who presided over its expansion as it opened offices overseas and pushed into areas like mergers and acquisitions, died along with his wife, Mary Alyce Merow, on Jan. 12 2019 in a fire in his Manhattan apartment. Mr. Merow was 89, and Mrs. Merow was 85. Mr. Merow, a lawyer whose clients included Kaiser Aluminum and affiliates of the mining company Rio Tinto, took the reins of century-old Sullivan & Cromwell in 1987, a time when Wall Street firms were broadening their services. No longer were they what the author Louis Auchincloss, who had worked at Sullivan & Cromwell from 1946 to 1951, called “green goods firms” — those that dealt mainly with securities offerings. Mr. Merow became chairman as Japanese companies were making big purchases in the United States, from Hollywood to Wall Street, with Mitsubishi buying control of Rockefeller Center and Sony spending $3.4 billion for Columbia Pictures. But Sullivan & Cromwell was facing crises close to home. One involved allegations about another senior partner, George C. Kern Jr., who had founded the firm’s mergers and acquisitions practice. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged that Mr. Kern had violated securities disclosure rules while defending Allied Stores in a hostile takeover bid by the Campeau Corporation. Mr. Merow stepped down as chairman in 1994. He was born on Dec. 20, 1919, in Little Valley, N.Y., southwest of Buffalo, the son of Luin and Mildred Merow. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1952 and served on a destroyer as a lieutenant in the Navy in the Korean War before going to Harvard Law School, where he met Mary Alyce Smith, who was working on the staff of The Harvard Law Review. They were married in 1957. Mr. Merow joined Sullivan & Cromwell after he received his law degree. The Merows are survived by a daughter, Alison, and two grandchildren. Another daughter, Ellen, died some years ago.