NYU Law Trustee George T. Lowy ’55 died on July 3, 2019, at age 87. “There are few NYU Law alumni who have remained engaged with the school for as long or as significantly as George Lowy, and we are honored by his commitment, devotion, and generosity,” said Dean Trevor Morrison in a statement. “[He was] a beloved member of our community, whose wisdom, warmth, and generosity left an indelible mark on the Law School and the legal profession.”
Lowy earned his BA, with honors, from NYU in 1953. Two years later he received his LLB, with honors, from NYU Law, where he was article and book review editor of the NYU Law Review. He practiced corporate law at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he focused on cross-border merger and acquisition transactions and financings for foreign clients. He handled major deals for clients such as IBM, DuPont, Time Warner, Westinghouse Electric, AXA, British American Tobacco, and Lazard Frères. Lowy became a partner at Cravath in 1965; served as the firm’s corporate managing partner from 1971 to 1973 and the head of the Corporate Department from 1982 to 1990; and led Cravath’s London and Paris offices for more than a decade. He became senior counsel at Cravath in 2002.
Lowy was deeply committed to service—to the legal profession and more broadly. He served as the chairman of the Committee on Corporation Law of the New York City Bar Association, as a member of the Board of Overseers of Brandeis University Graduate School of International Economics and Finance. and as the vice president of the American Hospital of Paris Foundation. He received the Medal of Service in 2010 for his significant contributions to the American Hospital of Paris Foundation.
Lowy’s impact was felt deeply at NYU, and especially at NYU Law. He served as adjunct professor at the Law School from 1983 to 1988, and he sat on the Advisory Board of the Lawyer Alumni Mentoring Program at the College of Arts and Sciences. He was a member of the Council on the Future of the Law School and co-chaired his class reunion committee many times. Throughout the years, Lowy was a steadfast and loyal supporter of NYU Law, giving to initiatives that included scholarships and financial aid, building funds, and faculty research. In 2003, he endowed the George T. Lowy Professorship of Corporate Law, currently held by Professor Marcel Kahan.
In recognition of his extraordinary generosity to the Law School, Lowy was awarded the Arthur T. Vanderbilt Medal—the Law School’s highest honor—in 1991 and the Judge Edward Weinfeld Award in 2006.
Posted July 9, 2019