Adams and Reese welcomes Benny C. Pace to the firm’s Houston office and as the new Banking and Finance Team Leader in Texas. Pace previously served as the former head of the banking and finance section at several Texas law firms, including Ross, Griggs & Harrison, the Houston office of Kelly Hart & Hallman, and also the former head of the financial entities section at Chamberlain Hrdlicka.

Pace has been practicing law since 1974 and successfully represented clients in loans of all sizes including more than 100 lending transactions involving amounts between $50 million and $4 billion. In addition to banking law, he also practices in energy, real estate and business transactions.

Pace has been named one of the “Top Lawyers” in Houston by H-Texas Magazine.

He represents foreign and domestic banks, investment funds, borrowers and savings and loan associations in secured and unsecured lending transactions relating to a wide range of financing including syndicated transactions, merger and acquisition lending, energy lending of all kinds, loan restructurings and workouts, real estate financings of all kinds, inventory and receivables financing, marine financing, asset based loans, project financings, securitized loans, and airplane loans.

Pace also has experience in banking regulatory work including the formation and financing of banks and holding companies; regulatory requirements, Regulations O, T, and U; bank and savings and loan white collar crime; director and officer liability; lender liability; and FIRREA matters.

Pace received his bachelor of arts in 1969 from The University of Texas at Austin, where he was a football letterman as a quarterback at the University of Texas, and preceding his college football career, he was the only 5-sport letterman in school history and an All-American quarterback at Sweetwater High School in Sweetwater, Texas. He earned his JD in 1975 from The University of Houston Law Center, where he also received the American Jurisprudence Award in Trusts and Wills, was an Honor Court Judge, President of the Phi Delta Phi Legal Fraternity, and recipient of the Fulbright & Crooker Scholarship Award.

In the Houston community, Pace is a director and President-Elect of the Houston Touchdown Club, a 501(c)(3) charity; former advisory director and chairman of the Cancer Counseling, Inc.’s Annual Golf Tournament, former member of the American Heart Association’s Golf Committee and Paul “Bear” Bryant College Coach of the Year Award Banquet Committee, former member of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Annual International Cup Polo Ball Committee, and a former member of the Boy Scouts of America Annual Golf Tournament Committee.

Pace is a former United States Air Force Officer from 1969-1972. He was voted outstanding junior officer of his squadron in 1971. He served as an assistant hospital administrator at the United States Air Force Hospital at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas.

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