About

James Mercer cares deeply about environmental issues, and in just over two years at HCP, has demonstrated this by driving forward the company’s sustainability efforts alongside its CEO. This included producing a global sustainability report; Mercer anticipates these may become a compulsory component of SEC compliance anyway, but wanted to produce it voluntarily to show that ‘there’s more to it than just being a corporate – being a green business is also very important’. This initiative is also indicative of the key role Mercer plays within the business as a member of its presidential committee. And, on the pure legal front, he appears to be upholding his reputation for achieving outstanding results. For example, he managed to settle litigation arising from Veritas’ 2007 acquisition of Sunrise Senior Living, and helped raise $1.7bn for its acquisition of 127 senior housing units from Emeritus/Blackstone in an astonishingly short space of time. On the latter, he says ‘it’s all about focusing folk’s attention and helping people to see the overall objective’. Joseph Coco of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP says Mercer has ‘bolstered HCP’s stability’, and that ‘the company’s continued success is largely a result of his expert judgement’.