A Friendship Worth $1.5 Million
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
It took ten years, but in the end, the friendship between Kerry King and Thomas F. Holt, Jr. proved very lucrative.
A GoLocalProv investigation has found that while King was the chief legal counsel to Governor Don Carcieri he helped kick a $1.5 million contract to Holt’s Boston law firm, K&L Gates.
The two men know each other through the exclusive Point Judith Country Club in Narragansett, where the cost of joining comes at a hefty $50,000. Holt lives in Boston, but owns a summer house in Narragansett worth nearly $900,000, according to town assessment records. King is a year-round resident of the town.
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King is a native Rhode Islander who grew up on Atwells Avenue and spent most of his career in financial services. He joined New England Mutual Life Insurance in 1969 as a junior tax attorney, eventually becoming the president. When New England Mutual was bought by Met Life in 1996, King headed up the sales and marketing division, overseeing a budget of $900 million and a staff of 11,000 employees.
King retired from Met Life in 2002 and, four years later, entered state politics.
In 2006, King unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor as a Republican—with his friend Holt squarely in his corner as a $1,000 donor to his campaign.
After losing in the Republican primary, King was hired by Governor Carcieri as his chief legal counsel in 2007—a position he held until last month.
This summer, King jumped back into the political arena and announced his candidacy for General Treasurer. King is running as a small-government conservative and has attacked public sector unions for causing the state’s budget woes.
His Web site boasts that he “has the intelligence, and integrity to help Rebuild RI to a place where taxes are low, government is small, and public sector unions no longer control the state House.”
Law Firm Has Global Reach
Thomas F. Holt, Jr. is a partner in the Boston-based K&L Gates, an international law firm with nearly 2,000 lawyers in 36 offices across three continents—North America, Asia, and Europe.
On its Web site, the firm says it represents “leading global corporations” as well as smaller companies and entrepreneurs in every major industry. “Our practice is robustly a full market practice at once regional, national and international in scope, and it is cutting edge, complex, and dynamic,” the firm states on its site.
In 2009, the firm’s revenues were in excess of $1 billion.
Holt has served as the litigation counsel to numerous government officials and the world’s largest international life safety code developer. He has also represented many multinational corporations before various tribunals, according to his professional biography.
Closer to home, he has handled some of the biggest cases in the Bay State, including the collapse of the I-90 tunnel built as part of the Big Dig project in Boston.
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