When actively practicing, Mario Zangari represented primarily owners and senior professional managers of closely held and publicly owned businesses. His representation included the various legal forms of business organization, of all sizes, that are United States based or intending to enter the United States market.  Small and medium size businesses comprise the majority of businesses that Mario represented in corporate, tax, personnel and all the other legal matters that these businesses confront daily.  Mario also represented individuals, groups and business entities that were attempting to purchase, sell, invest in or seek investment in, or expand into new lines of businesses throughout the United States.

For more than 40 years Mario continuously assisted and represented owners of businesses attempting to market and sell their businesses by all manner of means from the bankruptcy courts to bidding contests in horizontal or vertical integration of industries.  Mario has extensive experience negotiating and structuring all levels of taxable and tax free sales and purchases by the use of stock for stock, stock for assets, publicly traded or privately held stock of the acquiring corporation and anything in between these extremes.  The use of divisive reorganizations has been used by Mario when such Section 354 tax reorganization provisions have been fitted to circumstances that seem to be such a solution appears remote.  Some of the industries where multiple transactions were completed over the years are in the industrial gas industry; printing and publishing industries (including electronic); construction companies, including general, home, road, government and private sector contractors; soft goods manufacturers, wholesalers and retails in bricks and motor, catalogs and web based; engineering and survey firms; food industry, e.g. retail, wholesale, and production; real estate agents, brokers, and developers, including governmental financing providers to the real estate owners; temporary and permanent employment agencies; direct mail companies (print and electronic); funeral industry; defense and aerospace businesses; machine and eyelet shops; spirits and wine, wholesale and retail; retail insurance agencies, brokers, re-insurers and excessive line insurers; steel and metal supply centers and importers; various computer consulting and services companies; automotive dealers of various domestic and foreign brands; electronic data marketing and electronic data marketing consulting companies.

Over the years, Mario acted as not only the corporate or individual lawyer to his clients, but also their business advisor and sounding board.  In this role he acted in the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors, Advisory Boards, and informal early morning coffee listener at the local diner of clients aspirations.

With his experience in providing liquidity to client’s net worth by sale of their businesses and tax background in estate planning, Mario was intimately involved with his clients on the familial decisions to sell or transfer the business to the next generation and how such decisions can be accomplished from a personal, business and tax prospective.  Encouraging parents to make the hard objective decision about their children’s strengths and weaknesses is not easy, and in most instances the decision is always murky, emotional and full of uncertainty. Mario’s goal was always to encourage explicit decisions rather than controlled by no decisions.

In the latter years of his practice, Mario became increasingly involved in “fixing succession planning gone wrong” between spouses working together, parents and children, both in and out of the family business, unrelated shareholders and partners, siblings, cousins, or distant relatives in and out of the business; or business disputes between co-owners unable to enjoy the fruits of labor in good times or unable to co-exist when the stress of macro-economic factors pushes them to split apart rather than “pull together” to ride out the bad times.  This unusual legal and business environment provides a professional challenge to any lawyer because of emotionally charged circumstances that these people find themselves in when they do seek legal counsel.  With a tax background, Mario provided means of separation in some unique ways allowing all sides to realize much more of the value of their companies than a simple division, purchase or sale between parties.  With other members of the Firm in litigation, Mario was able to put together many complex situations allowing disputing owners and family members to separate and not create larger problems than already exist.  Separation has the value of allowing life to move on for these combatants and a freedom to pursue their own goals rather than existing or predetermined goals.

Mario’s involvement in non-profit organization for his entire career provided him a unique group of skills applicable to both the non-profit and profit worlds.  From small organizations like to local Children Museum to national organizations like the Red Cross, help found, preside as its second president of one of the first Hospital Foundations in Connecticut, to Hospital of St. Raphael Board of Trustees for over a decade as Finance and Investment Chairman, to Vice President of the fourth oldest Symphony Orchestra in the United States, Mario experienced many challenging and interesting times and situation that formed a base of experience that was very useful and valuable to his for profit and not for profit clients and activities.

Having started as a tax lawyer some 40 years ago, Mario has always been involved in contesting civil tax cases before the IRS administrative levels, the Courts; and in civil cases before the Connecticut Department of Revenue and other State Tax assessing departments.

Bar and Court Admissions: 

• Connecticut, 1970
• Rhode Island and New Jersey, 1969
• U.S. District Court District of Connecticut, 1970
• U.S. District Court District of New Jersey, 1969
• U.S. District Court District of Rhode Island, 1969

Education: 

• New York University School of Law, New York, New York, 1970
  LL.M. Tax, Master of Law(s) in Taxation
• Suffolk University Law School, Boston, Massachusetts, 1969
  J.D., Doctor of Jurisprudence
• Bryant University, Rhode Island, 1966
  B.S.
  Honors: Magna Cum Laude

Published Works: 

• Suffolk University Law Review, Note Editor
• Taxation Magazine and the Practical Accountant, Contributing Writer

Professional Associations and Memberships: 

• Connecticut, American and New Haven Bar Associations
  Business Law Committee
• Connecticut & American Bar Associations
  Tax Law Section
• Connecticut Bar Association
  Ethics Committee