The 2022 NJBIZ Law Power 50

Sills Cummis Managing Partner Max Crane and Members Ted Zangari and Jerry Zaro are included in the NJBIZ 2022 “Law Power 50” list of influential individuals in New Jersey’s legal profession. Managing Partner Max Crane came in at the #5 spot (only the top 10 are ranked).

NJBIZ had this to say about Crane, Zangari and Zaro:

No. 5: Max Crane
Crane leads Sills Cummis & Gross, one of the largest law firms in New Jersey. He joined Sills in 1984, giving him a deep understanding of the internal workings of the firm and of its client base.

As the firm’s leader, he allows attorneys with different talents to focus on what they’re good at – rather than on what the firm wants them to be good at – thus allowing many under him to flourish.

This past year has been one of the most profitable in the firm’s 50-year history, with profits per partner increasing more than 20% over last year.

According to the firm, Crane works with clients in the banking, energy, gaming, insurance and retail industries, among others. He has been involved in equity and debt financings and energy projects valued at more than $1 billion. These transactions have included initial public offerings, debt restructurings, conventional financings and the sale of equity in existing power projects.

Ted Zangari
A member of Sills Cummis & Gross, Zangari is chair of the firm’s Real Estate department (not to mention a founding member and executive committee member of the Rutgers University Center for Real Estate) and serves on its Management and Executive Committees. He’s the lead in Sills’ Redevelopment Law Practice group, work that finds him involved in big projects centered on brownfields, transportation centers and waterfronts. Like Hoboken Connect. The project finally won approval from the Mile Square City this summer, and Sills Cummis served as redevelopment council for its designated redeveloper, LCOR. Zangari also chairs the Public Policy and Governmental Affairs Practice group. This past spring, he offered his expertise as a participant in the state Chamber’s (where he also sits on the executive committee) ReNew Jersey Business Summit. Ahead of his engagement on the Taxes and Incentives panel, he spoke to NJBIZ about their status in the Garden State. “The best suggestion is quite simple: New Jersey policymakers should strive to keep and reduce all of the state’s tax rates — for businesses and individuals—at or below the tax rates of states all around us,” he said. “And if we can manage it fiscally, to really break out from the regional pack, we should strive to eliminate certain taxes, ideally the corporate business tax, and to put certainty around other taxes by use of automatic, formulaic increases and automatic sunsets.”

Jerry Zaro
Zaro is chair of the Banking and Real Estate Services department at Sills Cummis & Gross. He’s also commissioner and former chairman of the Gateway Program Development Corp., which oversees the $30 billion plan to build a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River and replace the Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River on top of expanding New York Penn Station, and other ancillary projects. Altogether, it adds up to the largest infrastructure project nationwide at the moment. After years of delay under the prior administration in D.C., Gateway has picked up steam. At the start of the year, the Hudson Tunnel Project was upgraded to medium-high by the FTA; a move that could make a combined $23 billion available. Meanwhile, the project received its first direct Federal funding allocation via $100 million from President Joe Biden’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget request. With regulatory requirements and permitting in place, transit officials expect construction to start in 2023. In May, the Commission moved forward on installing a CEO: former commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Transportation, Kris Kolluri. The next month, Amtrak announced a major contract to expand capacity and update the station. At the time, the Gateway commissioners stated that the effort was “a key part of delivering on the ultimate benefits of the Gateway Program.” Which is important, because as Zaro and other supporters of Gateway note, 20% of the American economy depends on the Hudson River tunnels carrying trains between Washington, D.C., New York City and Boston. And Zaro has been a supporter of the project for a long time. “He was very committed to being out publicly at a time when the projects themselves hit significant road-blocks,” a source who works closely with him told NJBIZ. “We needed to keep stakeholders, elected officials, and everybody else motivated and on board and rowing together for the project. Jerry did a great job with being out there and being an advocate for them and an evangelist to keep people’s motivation and interest up.”